Robert Brooker. 4 Exits Later, I Finally Enjoy Life

Written By Anastasia Koroleva

Episode - 11

Robert Brooker. 4 Exits Later, I Finally Enjoy Life
 

Robert Brooker: From building and selling businesses over three decades to mastering investing, he now savors life's fullness through travel, book writing, and time with loved ones. Today, he shares the lessons gained from this remarkable journey with us.

What We Discussed:

00:00:00: Introduction and welcome

00:01:06: Robert’s key life lessons

00:08:49: Robert’s entrepreneurial journey

00:12:19: First Business Exit experience

00:18:07: Contrast between owning a business and investing

00:20:55: Transition from Business owner to investor

00:22:56: Power of Imagination and Creativity

00:24:04: Concept of Management by Walking Around

00:30:11: Navigating the Identity Crisis Post-Business Exit

00:32:20: Investment advice

00:35:38: Post-Exits: Self Doubts and Success Assessment

 

00:40:54: Reflections on Past Business Management Experiences

00:54:12: Meaning of life and on personal growth

00:56:39: Connection between diversification and family life

00:59:56: Thoughts on spirituality

01:02:04: Views on psychoanalysis and its relation to spirituality

01:05:39: Transition to teaching and guest lecturing

01:08:13: Personal connection to Hungary and translation work

01:10:00: Discussion on the individual's success and the environmental influence

01:14:59: Process and challenges of writing a book

01:16:22: Importance of family, friends, and connection

  • Robert Brooker: [00:00:00 - 00:00:04]

    To just wait to see what comes in and to be reactive to it is a poor way to invest. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:00:04 - 00:00:22]

    Robert Brooker. Having built and sold multiple successful businesses over the past three decades, he now savors life's fullness through travel, book writing and time with loved ones. Today, Robert shares with us the very personal lessons gained from his remarkable journey from managing wealth to secrets of happiness. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:00:23 - 00:10:00]

    Do you want to be a 10% or 20% owner of some big company or do you want to be 100% owner of a smaller company? In any exit, there's a luck element to it, right? Out of the twelve companies I bought, they all got good returns. There are good exits and if I roll the dice again, just by chance, if I keep doing it, something's not going to work out. People are forgotten very quickly and that people overestimate their capacity for legacy. Is it possible to be smart from day one or do you have to make a lot of mistakes? It'd be stupid before you can be smarter. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:01:00 - 00:01:05]

    Thank you so much for being here. You're a very special friend and a very special guest for me. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:01:05 - 00:01:06]

    Well, you're very special. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:01:06 - 00:01:14]

    Thank you so much. Thank you. What are the most important life lessons you've learned since you've achieved financial success? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:01:14 - 00:01:24]

    It's easy to think you're going to be an investor. That's very hard to do and it's probably not a good thing for an exiting founder to do, for a lot of exiting founders to do. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:01:24 - 00:01:25]

    To be an investor. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:01:25 - 00:01:26]

    To be an investor. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:01:26 - 00:01:28]

    Do you mean like a full time investor? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:01:28 - 00:02:08]

    Full time investor. Or to really make that your final reset and be active investor or one should have the realistic expectations, and that's number one. Secondly, everyone has to define what's most meaningful for them. I think for me, my relationship with people around me that when I was very busy running a business that I didn't exercise so much. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:01:59 - 00:02:08]

    That's become more meaningful for me that is become my a large part of the focus at this time. That's why I'd say were the two the two phase. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:02:08 - 00:02:12]

    How do you choose the people you surround yourself with? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:02:12 - 00:02:29]

    You actually have some mixture of people who make me feel good being around. That I hope is mutual and mixing that with some novelty of serving the people. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:02:29 - 00:02:35]

    So you mentioned peer organizations before, women. So what role do they play in your life? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:02:35 - 00:03:30]

    Yeah, I think peer organizations, I think even more for me have been more like when I was running businesses, the peer organization was much more value to me than, let's say, than education. Let's say having an MBA from the four way because it's very real time and the people of the organization are doing having sort of the same problems at the same time and sharing information in real time and having that mutual education, I think super valuable and so support prior life in investing, it's a little bit different. I think it's valuable. It's a slightly different formula for investing. Beard group.But I think peer groups in general are whatever one's trying to accomplish. I think it's a sort of micro sort of method of education guidance. 

     

    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:03:30 - 00:03:31]

    Did money make you happy? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:03:31 - 00:03:50]

    By itself, no, but I think to the extent that it helps to enable time, they'll believe time and to accept that I can use that time to judge more relationships, then I think there's a lot of happiness associated with that. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:03:50 - 00:03:53]

    The money brought you time and time brought you happiness. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:03:53 - 00:03:54]

    Yeah. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:03:54 - 00:03:55]

    That being directly. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:03:55 - 00:03:57]

    Yes, indirectly.


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:03:57 - 00:04:02]

    What do you think the purpose of money is in your light to buy time? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:04:03 - 00:04:13]

    Yes. I mean, there's certainly a material needs as well, but I think more meaningfully, to me at least, is the time. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:04:13 - 00:04:15]

    What are the biggest mistakes you made as entrepreneur?. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:04:15 - 00:06:28]

    I mean, there's just so many mistakes, but it's not memorable advice. Well, as entrepreneur, when I was younger, my choice in businesses was I was just doing kind of what sounded cool at the time without losing analysis or not, and made some sub optimal choices. And so one has to ask oneself or ask myself, was that inevitable? Is it possible to be smart from day one, or do you have to make a lot of mistakes? It'd be stupid before you can be smart. So maybe that's just part of the, part of the process. There are countless mistakes. I think there's a little bit for entrepreneurship quality game than a quantity game. If you make enough decisions, and if just 60, 60% of them are big decisions, then you're okay, you make 40% banter. There was timing problems, there were industry poor decisions, there were certainly hiring decisions that were poor. I would say my track record of hiring people is maybe 50%. Actually, I think it's very hard to hire people. I know there's lots of methods and so forth to do it, but I think that's really hard to do because people are set up to sort of deceive. People are set up to psychology as somebody wants a position or a job is to present themselves as they actually are. So it's very hard to. There are techniques to kind of get around that, but they're really imperfect techniques, but I'm not sure overall, hiring faculty overall, aren't that great? Maybe 50% or so means I'll be luckier to get better. But so lots of mistakes. But fortunately there were enough things that while there was a lot of bad luck, but for bad luck, there's often good luck too. So I appreciate the good luck. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:06:28 - 00:06:31]

    What are the biggest mistakes you make as an investor? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:06:31 - 00:07:25]

    Certainly thinking that angel investing was a good asset class, that was a big mistake because as we talk, because terrible asset class. But it's maybe good for society to be angel investor, but as a way to make money, I think it's a poor way. What else is an investor doing background checks on anything that you do have professional background checks on? It's harder for young people if someone's 40 years old or older, and if they're a bad actor, it'll show up on their background and check. And you have to pay sometimes thousands of dollars to do professional background. You have criminal background, a lawsuit to that kind of thing. But anybody who's managing, if it's a fund, if to cheat your general partner fund or something like that, I'd be strong if multiple cases where doing background check is safe from a core decision. And so I think that's really important to do that. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:07:25 - 00:07:27]

    How do you define success today? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:07:27 - 00:07:43]

    I think having meaningful relationships, having health, having enthusiasm, that's enough for me at this time. And do you have role models right now? I don't. I should, but I don't right now. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:07:43 - 00:07:45]

    Why do you should? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:07:46 - 00:08:13]

    I don't know. I feel like I'm very inspired by people, people I know and could probably read about. And there's always something. I think everybody has something that's worthy of inspiration. But is there like, no person like, I want to be like that person? That person doesn't. I don't have such a person. I haven't found such person. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:08:14 - 00:08:15]

    Yes. What keeps you up at night? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:08:15 - 00:08:17]

    I'm sleeping pretty well. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:08:17 - 00:08:18]

    Nothing. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:08:18 - 00:08:20]

    Not too much.  


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:08:20 - 00:08:21]

    How do you want to be remembered? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:08:21 - 00:08:48]

    Most people have forgotten very quickly, but it would be nice if the people who are part of my life, my family, my friends for maybe a generation or two remember me as a good father, husband and grandfather of my grandchildren. And that would be very satisfying to imagine that. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:08:49 - 00:08:56]

    Could we start with you telling me about your entrepreneurial journey, how it started, and what you learned in the process? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:08:57 - 00:10:19]

    So the entrepreneurial journey. I always wanted to be an entrepreneur since a young age, like a lot of entrepreneurs, and that's sort of, that's its own story. But I worked initially in finance. I was a member of my brothers, and then I decided to start a business at age 25. And it was absolutely terrible business. It was such bad judgment. But I decided to go to central Europe. I went to Hungary. I started with a partner, a bagel shop. And that bagel shop lost so much money that we had to build 14 more to catch break even. And never did I work so hard for so little money. And that was the start of it. And then sort of the summary is that I tried multiple time starting companies with limited success. And at some point, after some years, I decided, I think I must have been, let's see, what was it, around 2000? So it was basically 20 years ago, decided that, you know what, I'm just going to buy companies that are already profitable. I want to have a burn rate and have to have that type of pressure, that type of stress. Want to buy companies that are already profitable. So a lot of the risk is taken out of it and then hold it or potentially sell it in the future. And so that's what I did for 20 years. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:10:19 - 00:10:24]

    So how many companies you owned that place so far? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:10:24 - 00:10:39]

    So it was about twelve companies total that I bought. But there were really four platforms. So many of them were both on acquisitions to existing platforms. So it ended up being really four separate companies, all of which are exiting at this time. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:10:39 - 00:10:46]

    So when was that sort of liquidity, then that changed the life? Which one was that? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:10:46 - 00:11:47]

    So the one that was really probably most transformational took place in 2007. So it was a business that I bought was most of the businesses were software companies. There was one that was a manufacturing business, and that was a, I really wasn't intending to sell it, but it was one of those things, like a lot of business owners, that you just sort of keep going and then sometimes someone comes along. In this case, it was a strategic acquirer that said, okay, we want to acquire you, and if you say no, we're going to your competitor to acquire that. And maybe that's clearly like a tactic to get them to sell to you. But the fact of the matter is, if the price is right, then why not sell? It's a little more complicated than that, of course, but I ended up selling and it actually ended up being quite lucky because that was October 20. I feel a lot of people who sell their businesses, they know the exact date, even like years later, they know the exact date that it's on. So in October of 2007, and as you probably recall, the financial crisis happened. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:11:48 - 00:11:50]

    And there were very good time to do it. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:11:50 - 00:12:18]

    And it was very highly leveraged when I bought it. It was very high leverage. I leveraged it four to one. So I had a lump debt service, and I think it was a great business, and it was resilient enough to withstand a lot of stress. But the financial crisis was deep enough that it probably would have put me in default on my debt. But we've had to renegotiate the debt that would have been carried, the equity. So that ended up being fortunate, although I didn't realize it at the time. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:12:19 - 00:12:24]

    So if you go back to that moment, how did it feel, your first exit? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:12:24 - 00:14:37]

    Well, it felt really good, because part of it was, because even though it was a good cash flow business, it was mostly paying down debt at that time. So it was very much sort of just keeping things going, paying down the debt. It wasn't generating a lot of cash flow, net of debt service. And one of the things that got me to buy companies was that, as opposed to sort of just having one company, like a lot of entrepreneurs do, is that I just had one company and I felt a lot of stress about that company. I noticed my investors in my company, because initially I had, I didn't have any money, I had investors, and I was like, they all have, they seem like they have better lives to be, like, they're more relaxed, they're less stressed. Why is that? Well, they have like ten other companies like mine that they've invested in, or lots of others. So if mine doesn't work out, mine doesn't work out for me, it's a huge deal, doesn't come from them, they have other things. And it made me, I was like, I want to have a diversified portfolio, but I didn't have. So that was the relief at that time, was really this sense of not being so stressed about having just one thing that can do really well or can do really badly. And it's funny, at that time I was a member of an organization called Better Investing, which is all around. It's one of the biggest in the US, mostly operates in the US. There was a session there, and because it was about selling, about liquidity events, and a lot of these sessions about liquidity events are put on by wealth. Managers are trying to sell you something. Well, this is sort of the pure situation. So they were trying to sell anything. And I was so glad I went to that, because they said, basically, if you have any sort of liquidity event, best thing to do is to do nothing. Resist. The temptation is going to be to spend a lot of money and I'll self take personal expenses or to go invest it, and there's all sorts of mistakes you made, and they're like, you know, just when it happens, just do nothing. Like, do one little. One little indulgence. They said, try do one little indulgence. That's it. So I went and I got, like, a nice jacket for myself. That's all I did. But it was just this wonderful feeling. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:14:37 - 00:14:41]

    Okay, so what happened next? How did that feeling develop over time? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:14:42 - 00:16:29]

    In that particular case? I think probably a lot of the people that business owners that you read every year, I'm sure they come in all different paths, but I think a lot of them have sort of one business, a large part of their career, and then they exit. In my case, it was more like, it was basically four exits, which were none were huge funk. I mean, they were substantial enough. But this first exit was where I knew I wasn't finished. Like, I knew I had more to go. And also, it was 16 years ago, so, I mean, I was young and so forth, and so I knew this wasn't the end for me, but it gave me the luxury of choice more and some sense of security and a lot less pressure, and I could take my time to find the next opportunity, and I didn't have to stress so much about how we live and support my family and so forth. For me, it was a little bit less of a cliff or sort of a binary thing, where I think now is very different because it's almost fully exited. I mean, I might already show when we come in still. And it's a different focus on lifestyle now than in Vegas, but at that time, it was a sense of being able to have a more diversified portfolio, having more financial security, but still not being. Still not the major pivot of life trajectory from doing business, kind of continuing to move further warriors. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:16:29 - 00:16:33]

    So what would you say were the key lessons you learned from your four exits? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:16:34 - 00:18:07]

    So there are a number of lessons. I think it was the right path for me, given my skill set, to essentially buy businesses that are already profitable and for other people, they're better at starting companies and building it from scratch or doing other things. That's different. But I think it was a good path. My self awareness is very limited. Most people's self awareness is very limited. It's very hard, I think, sometimes, to figure out what is, as an individual, what are you good at? Or at least you don't have to be really good at. We just have to be good enough to make it work. So that I feel was the right path for me. It gave me a lot of autonomy. It gave me the ability to apply a lot of creativity into business because I don't have artistic skills, I don't have other creative skills, but had the opportunity to apply creativity to business and to the teams around me and to what we did as businesses. And that's a certain type of creative endeavor. I had a little strategy that I did with all the businesses that I bought. It was certain type of, certain types of business that, that decided early on, I'm just going to buy this type of business. And that's what I did. And I just sort of, there's nothing more dramatic about it, but it was really just that applying the same concept over and over and over again for 20 years, and voila, something happened. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:18:07 - 00:18:45]

    So basically, the strategy of building and selling businesses, fix your personalities, take your skills, because you had the experience in the financial services industry, gave you autonomy, give you a channel, a way to channel your creativity. And what did you learn about yourself? that was need because of the exit. What surprised you about yourself? How your financial success changed the way you thought about your selfie, personality, your identity. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:18:45 - 00:20:54]

    Well, you know, it's interesting, I think, about identity. So for people who buy businesses versus start businesses, typically their identities are less tied up with them because they didn't create it from scratch. So it wasn't mine, it wasn't the founder of the businesses. So I didn't feel my purpose was not to sell them. My strategy was essentially to continue to run them and grow them. And if a good offer came along, then to be open to that, but not to sell within a certain number of years, or it meant that I could have held them for a long time with her. But fine. But in terms of what, I think there are a couple of interesting things that come out of one thing. A little bit, I'm not complaining, but there is a little bit of grass as green there. When you're in the middle of something, you always think that whatever's going to happen after what you're doing now is going to be better. Right. And I think there's a lot of stress around having a lot of vulnerability, around having most of your assets and part of your identity around a certain business. And so when you sell it, I'll say one thing, that a lot of people think that, well, I'm going to sell the business and then I'm going to be an investor, that kind of thing, and it'll be really exciting. Well, one thing that was a little surprising, V for that I had some investment background, was that in comparison, it's actually, well, to me it's less exciting than owning a buddy business investing, because it can be exciting for some people. But one reason is that for a business you own a business, you can fail miserably or it can go up ten x or 100 x. Right. But if you're investing and you're saying you're diversified and so forth, you can spend a lot of time and you make a return of 10%, and it seems that after tax, it's less than that. So it seems not very exciting compared to going in business. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:20:54 - 00:20:55]

    It solves a different problem. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:20:55 - 00:21:30]

    It solves a different problem. But I think a lot of it's interesting. I know you see it a lot, and I see it a lot, and we both see it a lot where a lot of people who are entrepreneurs, business owners, they're not good investors, or they shouldn't be investors, and they try to be investors. And a lot of mistakes that are made, very modern mistakes that are made. I'm hoping that the people who are listening to your podcast are typically listening, hopefully before they exit, or right when they exit, as opposed to after they've made some of these mistakes.


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:21:30 - 00:21:34]

    Whenever they feel they will stain, not before they exit. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:21:34 - 00:22:54]

    Well, yeah, that's unfortunate. Yeah, hopefully. But I think that's certainly something that I sort of learned. But the good news, or the good side of it, is that actually one thing so great you asked the question, because it helps me to think about it as well. When you think about sort of, okay, let's say as a human being, we all have aspirations, and some of us just don't even know what our aspirations are, but we're just sort of figuring out where our aspirations are. Or maybe they're unconscious, and a lot of times they're constraints to them, and they're always some sort of constraint. And a lot of times it would be very commonly, it's like I don't have time because I'm really busy with my job or my company or whatever it is. And a lot of times constraint is I don't have money to do that. And when these constraints are taken away, there's still a constraint, and at least what I found, and that is then the constraint becomes different. It becomes sort of a constraint of creativity. Like, do you have the creativity? And I would say not only achieve your aspirations, but figure out what your aspirations are. That it takes a certain art to it. And if you haven't been exercising that art during your career, it's like a muscle you haven't used. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:22:55 - 00:22:56]

    Imagination. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:22:56 - 00:23:36]

    Yeah, imagination. So that kind of turned to working on that now sort of forget, okay, most of the time, so many times after the fact, like if I do something and I think, oh, I didn't do that the right way or it didn't happen the way I wanted it to, and I could have done it this way, I want to have fewer times where I realize afterwards, oh, I could have done it this other, different way. I'd rather think of things more ahead of time in terms of how to best approach it. And so that, I think, is a realization that changed me just to work on. The major constraint of life is creativity. Figure it out in that. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:23:36 - 00:23:39]

    How do you stimulate your imagination and creativity? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:23:39 - 00:24:02]

    I don't know fully the answer. I'm still figuring it out. But I will say one thing comes to know. There's this Dave Backard who founded Ackerd, I think he was an engineer. He found the mean, it's widely known, this sort of management strategy of management, by walking around. I think he was a formerly trained management. So he would just walk around the company, I think, a lot during the day. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:24:02 - 00:24:03]

    Looking for inspiration. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:24:04 - 00:25:35]

    Yeah. And just talking to people and figuring out what everyone's doing and where are they going to training. And this became this waspy of management by walking around. And that, I think, is super useful for a valid management strategy. Sounds so simple. And also you create a rapport of loyalty. And I think that there is something about that that carries over to personal life as well, that if one just sort of walks around, and you're not just walking around company headquarters anymore, right. You're kind of walking around the world, or you're walking around your friends and your family, and you're walking around strangers, you're meeting new people, and you're doing it wherever you want to go. And it's just talking to a lot of people and listening better than I used to listen before to people, because I was so focused on something else. I was so focused on building my company that if what team was saying didn't relate to, couldn't help me to build my company, I wasn't so interested. I hate to say it that way. I mean, I was interested, but I'm saying that was my focus. And so just sort of walking around, walking around, like walking around the people in my life, and even the people are not in my life yet. And in talking and hearing and hearing what is important to them, what they're thinking about. That's a way right now at the data flow and inspiration. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:25:35 - 00:26:42]

    So I assume you're trying to be present with them and try to be compassionate and interested in them. Would that be?


    Robert Brooker: [00:25:42 - 00:25:47]

    I try to be, yeah, I try to be. I'm working on it. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:25:47 - 00:26:02]

    Can we go back to what you said before? I thought it was very interesting. You said that there are common mistakes that entrepreneurs do when they try to be investors, which such mistakes you notice that people make. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:26:02 - 00:29:01]

    Well, I think there's several I noticed. I mean, one is they spend a lot of money right up front on personal stuff and they end up regretting it. My second one is this drive to invest right away. So there are a lot of things going. One is that some business owners, entrepreneurs think they have, they have an exit. And maybe there are all these articles in the press about how amazing they are and all the people around talking about how brilliant they are, their colleagues, their employees and everything. And so people think they have the Midas touch and that everything they're going to do is going to be wildly successful. And so it's very common for entrepreneurs after exit to just like, just invest in a bunch of stuff and have too much confidence in what they're investing in. And there are two problems. One is that they invest in bad stuff generally, but then the other problem is this sort of vintage diversification or sort of business cycle risk. And then if your exit is in your, like, let's say my first exit was 2007, let's say I invested it all, then it would have been a disaster right before the financial crisis. So this notion of, so a lot of lockdowns, they invest everything right away, and it's the bad end cycle, and then they end up losing a large part of it. I think a lot of business owners that exit especially, it's been in the press, you get barraged with all these people who, all these investment managers and people who various investments and schemes. And so you get all this inbound, including friends, including people you know and may trust, which is okay. But to be sort of reactive, to just wait to see what comes in and to be reactive to it is a poor way to invest, as opposed to be more proactive and think, okay, so what are all the asset classes out there? And how can one be allocated across asset classes? And maybe the extent of the five managers who are approaching you, there are actually 500 managers out there. How do I look at all of them in some sort of systematic way? Get the proper help that has interest, who is interested aligned. It's a very different skill then it's completely different skill investing versus owning a business, running a business. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs have false confidence that they're just going to do this and a lot of them will just vest a lot of people they happen to know, so they don't know very well, and sometimes unscrupulous people, and they end up, or they've asked a lot of companies somewhere with their company, which can be good in the sense that they know the business, but can be bad in the sense that they're taking out a lot more risk than they really think they are. So I think all of these things are super common mistakes, and I don't know, I would get, I'm curious what your opinion is, but I think business owners who become really good at investing, maybe like ten or 20%, I don't think it's a huge. What would you guess? 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:29:01 - 00:29:13]

    I agree with you, and I think more often than not, these are people that also have some experience in the financial services industry or just have very pragmatic personalities. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:29:13 - 00:29:14]

    Yes. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:29:14 - 00:29:31]

    Because another thing I noticed is that oftentimes entrepreneurs are not necessarily very pragmatic, and they build their businesses for passion to solve a problem or something like that. And that mentality does not really translate very well into investors. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:29:32 - 00:29:41]

    That's a great point. A lot of entrepreneurs, they don't assess risk very well because they've done incredibly risky things and they happen to, and it paid off. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:29:41 - 00:29:42]

    It paid off. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:29:43 - 00:30:11]

    May have been lucky, may have been luck, or may have been insight or some combination of luck and insight, most likely. But yeah, I totally agree with you is that this sort of deaf ear to risk is really bad for. It's okay for an entrepreneur because you want to be really positive. You're trying to persuade investors to invest and employees to be recruited and so forth, and you have to be super positive about it and not really talk about the risk or think about it so much. But in an investing context is super dangerous. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:30:11 - 00:30:44]

    Yeah, I actually made the mistakes you mentioned. I was overconfident. In fact, I was very annoyed when wealth managers approached me and was saying that I should expect 3% return. I thought, of course, I can do better myself. And then it went angel investing and pretty much lost all my angel investments very quickly. Thankfully learned that lesson. But I see other exquisite founders rush into angel investing, I think for similar reasons. Another reason is the identity thing, especially in the tech industry. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:30:44 - 00:30:44]

    Yes. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:30:45 - 00:30:56]

    Is that you want to feel that you still belong to the ecosystem. If you're an angel investor or we see or have some other similar label, you're still an insider in the tech world. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:30:56 - 00:31:37]

    Yeah, I think. Absolutely. I think that's such a great point. And actually, I didn't even go so far as say that angel investing as an asset class is a really bad asset class. In fact, I think even reading the data supports that, that if you take an average, of course, average has terrible failures and great successes. We average it all together. Angel investing, sort of these early stake, early round sort of equity investments, the average performance is terrible, solely worse than SMB. But, yeah, a lot of entrepreneurs, they think they're going to do better than the average. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:31:37 - 00:31:47]

    Yeah, I think some people also feel it's a form of giving back to the staff community, but there's so many other ways to give back instead of spending money. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:31:47 - 00:32:19]

    Yeah, I think that's true. And the other thing is that in terms of advisor or being on boards, that type of thing. And also, I think for a lot of exited business owners, you can have separate buckets. You can have a bucket where large investments are going to these asset classes and this other bucket of smaller amounts of money just to help people are going to go into early stage. And maybe it's small, Jeps, but it's helpful or something like that. There's a way to get back. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:32:20 - 00:32:24]

    So what would be your investment advice to someone who just exited? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:32:25 - 00:35:38]

    First of all, don't do anything fast. That's the most important thing. Absolutely. And I had the same instinct that you did is like, when all these wealth managers approached me or I heard about them and so forth, I was like, oh, I can do so much better than they delegate everything to. Wealth manager is not some of a bad idea. I learned this, Earl. I finally realized that it's actually, now there's some wealth managers that are. Here's what I think about wealth managers in general. I think the really good investors, the best investors, this formula that if you run a fund, we're this sort of two and 20 formula. We did 2% management fee and 20% carry or be a plus or minus that is so powerful that the best investors are doing that they have their own funds, and you become much, make a lot more money than if you're a wealth manager charging 60 basis points or something like that. So I think the really talented investors do that year one fund to get better compensated. But that's not to say that I think there are a lot of terrible wealth managers out there. And just the power of diversification, frankly. And actually I think another thing is that it's not a bad idea to just have some division, just put division between the SP 500 or some index and maybe bonds or maybe full SP or something like that. And if return seems low, it's actually very sp. The index is very tax efficient because you don't realize how much in gains until you sell. It's very hard to get that kind of tax efficiency with private investments. That's not a bad strategy. What I did, which is a little bit different, which it suits me for right now. I might end up with a wealth manager, but there was another search saying that they're consultants. They're basically investment consultants. And it's not for saving money because I'm probably paying them the same amount that I would pay a vault manager. But basically they pay the flat fee. This is actually just, I'll do my own public stuff myself. I'll just do highly first spy. I'll do individual stocks typically and so forth. But these are companies that will follow managers of asset managers in terms of have funds and all sorts of stupid asset classes. And one that I've hired covers 200 different managers. They do a lot of work. They do it better than I could. And frankly, it's a lot of time. They do it better than I could. And if I even want to try and do it in the mediocre way, it would take me countless hours to do it. And they don't care if I invest or not. They have no incentive to do it. But they do a lot of work and they help me to find the managers that will work for my objectives. That's a resource for it. But I golf. But you do all the admin stuff. I have to get my own admin for it and can send fire transpiration, that type of thing. That's a model that I'm doing. So that's another model. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:35:38 - 00:35:41]

    So it's almost like a family office. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:35:42 - 00:36:11]

    Small family, yeah, but small. The asset levels you need for a full family office are. I mean, it did some Bates, but it's at least my opinion, hundreds of millions of dollars at least to justify. Because if you want to have an investment professional, you have to hire a cost hiring professional. Someone as good is high enough that you have to have that asset level to justify percent of cost basis. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:36:11 - 00:36:17]

    Let's talk about saying no to people who want money from you. How do you do that? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:36:17 - 00:36:59]

    Yeah, I'm still trying to figure that out. I just had a dilemma the other day about that. And that is there's always the option just not to reply. Right. Someone, I don't really know that I just will reply kind of thing, but turns up with someone. I couldn't have a relationship or something like that. And I couldn't decide, especially the last few days that I'm going to try if it's something that somebody that I have some sort of, that I care about some way, even if it's just present to be a good friend. It could be what you said. I'm like that. I think my policy is going to be to reply, just say no and maybe say why rather than just not reply. It's very tempting just not to reply. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:36:59 - 00:37:00]

    What's your skin? Your why, though? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:37:00 - 00:37:28]

    For example, if it's angel investments, I say so. They come in different categories. Angel investments. I almost never invest. I mean, here's what I say. I say almost never invest in angel. I think it's terrible asset. All the stuff I was saying earlier, it's terrible asset class for, let me put it, actually, let me rephrase that. It's terrible asset class for me. Some people, I think actually extremely few people who are good. Do you know any really good angel investors who are really successful, who talk about a lot but are actually successful? 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:37:28 - 00:37:30]

    It's hard to tell right?


    Robert Brooker: [00:37:30 - 00:37:30]

    Yeah. It's hard to tell. Yeah. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:37:30 - 00:37:37]

    Because you usually don't know those who are successful. Then you think, are they just lucky? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:37:37 - 00:37:38]

    Yeah. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:37:38 - 00:38:33]

    But I'd say these would probably be people who have some kind of insider information that others don't have, like they read in all these particular founders, particularly. Then I think there's no guarantee because I did at some point decide that I'm going to only angel the best into repeat founders. Like, they have to be repeat founders. I was very excited about that idea until I realized that there's another problem there, that lots of repeat founders will rush into starting a new business when they're not ready, before they cross first their previous exit, and then they'll lose motivation and they just don't want to do it. That was my experience, for example. And then I thought, okay, that also doesn't work. So some founders were just inexperienced and didn't do a good job. Other founders didn't process their previous exit sufficiently, didn't make a good decision to start a new business, and that there's luck. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:38:33 - 00:38:38]

    Yeah. You've defined your criteria pretty well. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:38:38 - 00:38:41]

    My criteria? Lots of questions with it. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:38:41 - 00:38:54]

    Okay, so you and I are similar that way. So basically. So for angel investors, I typically say I'll grab. I said I think it's terrible asset class. I rarely do it unless some good friend or someone I will want to help. And you end with a small amount. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:38:54 - 00:38:57]

    I would do it that yes, and it's not a financial reason. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:38:57 - 00:39:33]

    That's not a financial thought about their deal is bad shift. I don't do it, period. And then if it's something else, usually I say what the reason is. I think the fees on NASA class I want to be in or don't ask us a lot to add to. I already have enough exposure to it, or I think the fee structure is wrong, or the team's not experienced or whatever. There are a whole bunch of reasons that I can usually say. I mean, I don't want to do like paragraphs, but in one or two sentence possible, I think to say why. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:39:33 - 00:39:42]

    So let's go back to your first exit. Did you have self doubts after that exit? Did you feel like, oh, maybe I'll never be successful as successful again? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:39:42 - 00:40:50]

    Yeah, there's definitely. Well, I feel it now. Feel it now more. I mean, at that time, if I wanted to do more, but the reason that I stopped doing it, my last exit, which was two years ago, and why I'm decided not to do it again, is that four good exits, in any exit, there's a luck element to it, right. So out of the twelve companies I bought are basically four platforms, they all got good returns. They were good exits. And if I roll the dice again, just by chance, if I keep doing it, something's not going to work out, I'm going to have a problem. Right. And so I don't want that. Yeah, it's not so much. And actually some of it is.  And I'm older now, maybe, I don't know. It's hard to tell. My skills, certainly my energy level may not be as high as it was 20 years ago when I had the certainly desire and make it the capacity to really work really long hours and fly all over the place. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:40:51 - 00:40:54]

    Because you had been quite hands on in those businesses. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:40:54 - 00:41:49]

    Yeah. If all them I ran, I didn't run them all the time. Sometimes I would hire CEO or I sort of had multiple ones going on at the same time. They were overlapping a lot of them and not always sort of lack the other, but for all of them, I felt it was important for me to obey when I bought it to start running it. And the reason was part of it was financial, that I didn't have to pay an extra salary and paying myself that kind of thing. But part of it was that was to hire CEO. I wanted to know the business really well myself before hiring a CEO because if I didn't do that, CEO would say this and that reason for this and that. I wouldn't know like if it's BS or not, but if I run it, I think I had better capacities for a manager as the CEO and that's why I did it, even though it won't work. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:41:49 - 00:41:57]

    So you wouldn't consider taking a more passive approach now because you wouldn't want to be in this situation when you're not sure what you're seeing with his talent. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:41:57 - 00:42:30]

    Yeah, that and I just wouldn't do it anymore. Theoretically, yes. You get higher returns potentially, yeah. The grass seems greener if you're getting sort of 10% as derivative investor, let's say, or 8% or 12%, whatever it is. And yeah, it seems like going back into it where you get 20-40, 50% IRRs, let's say. And if you're really fully focusing on it potentially for a private business seemed attractive, but has tore today more. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:42:30 - 00:42:38]

    But your strategy was to keep buying similar business. So it was a rings and the thin situation more or less, wasn't it? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:42:38 - 00:43:36]

    There were different industries where they were mostly software businesses. They were all leaders in their whatever the market segment was. And when I say leader doesn't mean that people said as leader they had the largest market share in their market segment, even if it was a small market segment. And then there's low cost for concentration and high recurring revenue in them. But they were all different. They all share with different industries. So I ended more cutting new industries. But there were some enough commonality to have some best practices in some ways. And if you're the market meter, also if you're coming from another industry and you're buying the market meter, you get a little bit more, you're under a little bit less pressure if you're already the market leader and customers, a lot of customers will buy your product because we are the market leader and you don't have to hustle a line sports, you can make a few mistakes and the market will kind of forgive you. Whereas if you're not the leader, a forward bug. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:43:36 - 00:43:44]

    Would he recommend it as an investment strategy for exited founders to go and buy someone else's business and do what he did? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:43:46 - 00:45:06]

    I think it's a little hard. It's more competitive now. So you pay higher valuations basically. Most time what I was doing, I was paying about five times cash flow, three times cash flow. If that valuation, now there were high growth businesses, but if you buy it five times cash flow, that's at 20% return doesn't grow, that's not bad. If it goes down, that's problems. If you build leverage on it and keep it stable, Irr goes up, especially if you're getting, I mean, now you can't get debt at 6%, but you used to be able to get it. And so that was my particular model. Now you're paying higher valuations, you have to be better at it. And you used to be like, you really have to kind of have to grow the companies. The leverage doesn't help you as much now the current rates do. I recommend it? Yeah. I think for a founder that doesn't want to do a startup again, once again, business cash flow, I think it's great. It's a different game. It's a different game. And if you kind of know what you're getting into and that's what you want to do, you know what the game is and you want to play that game. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:45:06 - 00:45:10]

    How would you go about it on the practical standpoint? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:45:10 - 00:45:43]

    Well, if you have cheaper industry expertise, Gretz is the best place to go. And something that particularly like, I see a lot, actually, I see it a lot with founders that are in industry and then their non compete expires. So two to five, whatever your non compete period is. So you take it easy for two years, or you work for the acquirer or for your company that you sold for a certain time, you take off if you want, and then your non compete expires, and then you buy a company. The civil war industry, you're saying the. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:45:43 - 00:45:46]

    District, but you bought companies in different industries. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:45:46 - 00:46:03]

    I watch companies in different industries, but in terms of, for a founder, that would be, I think, an easier or a better thing to do, and then you could pay a higher valuation because you're more confident. I had to pay five times cash flow because a lot of times I didn't know the industry so well. So I was like, well, I mean, five times cash flowing. Perfect. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:46:04 - 00:46:15]

    So you clearly don't advise angel investing, but you think buy companies can be a good strategy at what size in the company? It could make sense to buy a company. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:46:15 - 00:48:39]

    I think it really depends on your skill set. So if some people are founders that they're really good at sales, avoid growing, good growing revenue, then you buy a company in the same industry that maybe already has infrastructure, maybe a deal is profitable. It actually may not be profitable, but, you know, you can grow it more than it's growing now. You buy it and then your strategy is just to implement whenever. The way you grew revenue in the previous company, that was never my real skill set. When it's growing revenue, my skill set was more about not even sure what it was more about sort of managing risk and kind of keeping things going. For me, it would be more rather getting a low multiple going into it. But I think it depends. I think as an exit founder, if you figure if you know, you probably know what your skill set is, you know where you spend most of your time, maybe you're an engineer and your focus was on product or something like that, you find some company that can really use whatever your skill set is and you buy it. If you buy it, okay, you say, sure, you have to pay for it doesn't cost zero, but you've saved five years. You've probably, right, 510 years to me. Whatever. You've saved years of time and you've saved a lot of work, and you have something that's already in place that's a great formula for stuff. So then a lot of it also depends on in terms of your choice to do is what value do you put on control? So, I mean, you can get a much bigger company depending on what your capacity is. For me, it was important to basically, initially, I didn't have money, so I had to have investors and so forth. But it came a point where sort of control was important for me. So I had to have companies that I could buy that I could have sort of control of. That's for an activity founder to think about. Do you want to be 10% or 20% owner of some big company, or do you want to be 100% owner of a smaller company or 51% owner of something in the middle? Look, I think there's a lot less risk if you're controlled. But the fear a lot of people have made and very successful with non controlling interest in companies, and they know how to play that game and demanded sports and keep investors on the side and so forth. And that's still set then. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:48:39 - 00:48:42]

    So what did you do? How big of a stake did you buy? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:48:42 - 00:51:03]

    I typically did so initially. Initially, I didn't have money, so I had to get investors, but I would get essentially founder stock for putting it all together. I think one of the things, I'm a guest lecturer now at business school, and one of the things when I talk to students is about sort of a lot of students, when they say it's listed at a business school, and basically they get out and they interview a bunch of places or they get a bunch of job offers, and you can kind of negotiate, but you can't negotiate very much. And so basically in my class about, okay, you may not have that choice, your first job or wherever you graduate, but think about how you can start to define the terms of how you relate to other people in the world. So how do you sort of put the deal together? So even if I do have money, if I found a company that was for sale or that could be for sale, and I sort of already has all the terms, and then I went to investors and said, okay, here's the deal. I'm putting together the deal. I'm in a position where I can define what I get out of it, right. Stop being presented to me. So, for example, the opposite is that, let's say if PE Fir has a company that they want and they're hired as CEO, they're sort of putting together all the terms. The CEO negotiate a little here and there to kind of just take it and leave it. So I think the a definition of entrepreneurship generally came about starting a company. I consider it more broadly entrepreneurial. It's around sort of defining the terms of how you relate to others in your life and your financial life and your business life. Initially, I would sort of put the deal together and have found over stock. And then as I got more exits, I had the task to take more. So eventually, I would just hectic 1% of the company and close to 100%. That's how I did it. That was appealing to me and appealing to, and also there's the tax strategies. There's various other reasons that I found that to be appealing, but there are all sorts of different ways, as you know, to build companies and messages. That just happens to be where I chose. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:51:03 - 00:51:15]

    So when you achieved financial freedom and you knew you could just continue passive investing, what rated you to still run a business and buy another business and be. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:51:15 - 00:53:54]

    I think the returns were, the returns were really attractive, and I felt like I reduced some of the risk because there's that one deal I told you about, the first exit where I'd leverage it. For one, there was like 8% debt and 20% equity, and I put almost all the equity in that one, and that was because I had no choice. But there was a huge amount of risk in one take. And then later, I took less but less forward on it. It was less risky. But the difference was, when I look at different asset classes, basically the reason I kept doing it, I'm not doing it now. But the reason I kept doing it for a while was that there were really only two asset classes where if I was successful or semi successful, getting relatively high IRRs, and one was buying these private companies where, as I mentioned, it's five times cash flow, so it'd be 20% IRR would leverage all that. It's higher, and then as you grow it, it's even higher. So it could be 30, 50, 70% IRRs. That's super attractive. It's very hard to find investments that get that kind of IRR. Then the other asset class, which is very attractive, is real estate also probably because of leverage, partly luck, because it was a period of time starting in the now. I was doing some sort of side stuff, and this is more of a diversification for me, that I was doing some real estate on the side. And in case my businesses didn't work out, at least I could survive on rental income, some rental income with leverage and with appreciation. 20% plus 20%, 30%. IRA real estate generally was super common, at least in the US. But I think a lot of places for the past 2030 years, any other asset class, if you average it all together, a lot of people talk about, oh, I got 20% on this or that, but if you really average together, if you really average together, you can get 20% IRR on this. But then you have cash and you have something that lost money, and you have something that got 2%, or whatever it is, you really average together. It's like 10%, 8%, I don't know, something like that. To your question about why did I keep doing it, just the notion of having sort of passive diversified portfolio was not super traffic financially, especially after tax. And that's what made me keep doing it, because the retracement is so much higher. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:53:54 - 00:54:01]

    So it sounds like there was financial motivator, which was the strongest up to now. So it took you four exits to satisfy that. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:54:01 - 00:54:02]

    That's true. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:54:02 - 00:54:29]

    But now you're no longer motivated to correct by that. So great, let's talk about your motivation, which is not financial right now. So you want to explore the world, it sounds like, in a non structured manner. By just walking around and discovering the world, how do you think about how you want to grow personally over time? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:54:29 - 00:55:10]

    I mentioned earlier about that the main limiting factor is creativity. And so what does that creativity really apply to? And a lot of it's around my relationships with other people, my relationships with the people I love in my life, my family, my friends, humanity in general, to some extent to a large extent, how do I be? And there's certain creative creativity in nurturing relationships that is meaningful to me at this stage of life. And that's really, I would say more than anything, folks, by life these days. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:55:10 - 00:55:14]

    How about parenthood? What are the lessons you learned? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:55:15 - 00:55:53]

    Well, actually, so tipsy mentioned that. So we were talking earlier about diversification. Right. So you're a business owner, you have one business, and it's super nerve wracking because you could live or die by that business. And then over time you get diversification and they less stress about that. But then trade to my family life. I have one spouse of 32 years and one daughter. We have one child. And. Wait a second, that's not a very diversified portfolio. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:55:57 - 00:55:59]

    You better take very good care of them. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:55:59 - 00:56:39]

    Yeah, exactly. So the same thing, the way that I had to take care of my business when I only had one, really one business now that sort of transferred itself to my family life because I have one wife and I have one daughter, and they're very important to me and very special to me and I don't have any other options. It's very important and meaningful for me to nurture that and to make it work and make it satisfying, enjoyable, and obviously not just for me, but for them. It goes both ways. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:56:39 - 00:56:45]

    So do you feel you became a better husband and a better father since your motivation changed? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:56:45 - 00:57:09]

    Well, I'm trying to be. Whether I am or not, who knows? I'm trying to be. Yeah, I'm focusing on that at least. But it's a little bit like that's a bustle. I'm attempting to exercise more, working out more, and I think like a physical muscle, it gets better over time than intentionality. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:57:09 - 00:57:09]

    Yeah, absolutely. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:57:09 - 00:57:13]

    So that's my goal, at least. We'll see. Talk to me to get it in five years. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:57:14 - 00:57:21]

    I will. So what about your friends? It's like in bigger social circle than your family. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:57:21 - 00:58:14]

    Yeah, I think a lot of it is. Having freedom of time is really important and helpful. So it's like when I was busy, if I had a friend who had a birthday party and it was in some other city, so go. I'm too busy. I can't come. But so nice to say, yes, I can come and come to. No matter where it is, I'll come to it. That's very meaningful to me and even to create events. So some events happen and then it's also to take the time. And some people, some people have time, some people don't have time. I'll organize some trip or some event or something like that in some way for us to connect and have meaningful time together. And so that's been something that's become reward to me as a source of solar. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:58:14 - 00:58:21]

    And you would say you are intentional about it, like with your family. You're more intentional organizing time with your clients. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:58:21 - 00:58:22]

    I'm working time, yes. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:58:22 - 00:58:25]

    You're very generous with your time with us. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:58:25 - 00:58:26]

    Well, those things I would. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:58:27 - 00:58:34]

    Thanks. What else do you find meaningful in life? Well, relationships is really the focus. 


    Robert Brooker: [00:58:34 - 00:59:37]

    That's what. Focus, yeah. So that's mostly doing some. You're fortunate you don't have this in the UK, at least not at this time. But we have this issue in the US right now where democracy is under threat. So spending some time on that, on providing another Trump presidency, but that's temporary, that waking up for next year and see what happens. But my main focus, more long term focus, is just to Richard wire relationships and make the most of them. And I'm not a seer of spirituality, but I'm thinking that I want to open a mindset to spirituality, to let it come to me, to be a little bit more kind of aware of my surroundings and listen harder and be open to it. I think it's totally valid to go and seek it actively. I've decided I don't want to seek it actively, but I want to put myself in a position to receive it if and when it comes. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:59:37 - 00:59:46]

    But you're a reader. You love reading. Do you read spiritual texts? Or did you read just wait for it to come to you? 


    Robert Brooker: [00:59:46 - 00:59:56]

    Yeah, it's funny. No, I have not been. I mean, I feel as a way to sort of seek it, and I haven't been doing that, or at least not in a simply fashion sort of looking for it. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:59:56 - 00:59:59]

    Why is that, that you want it in your life? Why don't you? 


    Robert Brooker: [01:00:00 - 01:00:22]

    I'm not sure that somehow I feel that. It's a great question. I've never been a big fan of these sort of. I don't know if it is sort of self help books in general. I prefer to, but I don't know why. 

    There's no good reason for it, because there's nothing wrong with it all. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:00:22 - 01:00:24]

    But I don't feel a need. 


    Robert Brooker: [01:00:25 - 01:01:11]

    I don't even feel the need. I might feel an impulse to do it, but it doesn't mean I shouldn't do it, but I hope I shouldn't do it. I'm reading right now. We were at the Ford museum last week, and I picked up that biography. So right in the middle of the biography, are you reading it? I'm reading it now. He is a gift. Crazy life, Sigura Foy. And you know, there's some spirituality in that. So I feel spirituality pervades all sorts of aspects of humanity. And maybe this is a hypothesis. So I may probably try to get thin ICE here, but I'm going to pause up the theory that just reading about human, somehow it captures spirituality as well. It may be a little indirect. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:01:11 - 01:01:48]

    If you look at all the different religions or philosophical texts, at the end of the day, spirituality is a spiritual growth is growing from our selfishness into our selflessness. Right when we become more in touch with the universe and the divine. That's what it is. So, for example, when you tell me that you care about others, your family, your friends and the humanity, to me it sounds like you're grown spiritually. You may not define it that way because you don't feel the need to define it you put a label on it. But that's the way what it is. 


    Robert Brooker: [01:01:49 - 01:01:51]

    Yeah, I think maybe it's a step of that. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:01:51 - 01:02:04]

    If you develop your own compassion, your presence, your love for others, and you appreciate your daughter and your wife more, to me, that's spiritual growth, whether you read spiritual text or not. 


    Robert Brooker: [01:02:04 - 01:02:15]

    I'd like to see it that way, that that's part and maybe there's more than that even, but that's a good start. And frankly, if that's all it is, that's very satisfying to me. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:02:15 - 01:02:36]

    And by the way, I find reading about psychoanalysis very stimulating in terms of spirituality, because if you think about subconsciousness, that's in a way also a doorway to spirituality, to the divine, something that's bigger than us, as we understood. 


    Robert Brooker: [01:02:36 - 01:03:26]

    Well, yeah, it's interesting. So it's hard to tease out. I think you're right. It's hard to tease out. There's all this Bs in the middle case of Sigmund Freud, who we saw his library. His library was actually a small percentage was about science and about psychology, and the majority was about sort of ancient archaeology and ancient myths and things like that. So you would say Sigmund Freud, he saw out a total of 170 patients throughout his lifetime. He tended to favor people who were like wealthy or prestigious people, which that by itself says that it's not all about helping people then he just loved hanging out with. And he put on a little bit of a show for his. So there's a lot of, you know, for someone, there's a lot of sort of expert on ego he had a lot of ego himself. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:03:26 - 01:03:27]

    Oh, yeah. 


    Robert Brooker: [01:03:27 - 01:03:56]

    I think we all do. I mean not very levels, but everyone has some level of that. And for someone who's so celebrated, what he did was ludicrous. Someone would come in and tell them their dream, and he would, because he read some music. Reminds me of some ancient egyptian myth. This means you're in love with your sister and blah, blah, blah, and then the patient will be horrified and then sometimes commit suicide. I mean, that's horrible. That's terrible. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:03:56 - 01:04:00]

    They also say more shamanic than scientific. 


    Robert Brooker: [01:04:00 - 01:04:41]

    Yeah, exactly. And there's a lot to spirituality that's shamanic as well. And frankly, if that's maybe back to your question, maybe sometimes I'm skeptical about these books about spirituality, maybe unjustifiably skeptical of a lot of these books about spirituality, or a lot of them. They say, here's the way to live like this. And then the next book says, well, here's the other way to live, like this. And they all seem different things, and maybe different things except the possibility that different things are valid for different people. But something about it that is out of tooling to me at this moment in life. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:04:41 - 01:04:45]

    I wonder if modern self help industry exploits it for you. 


    Robert Brooker: [01:04:45 - 01:04:46]

    Yeah, a little bit of that. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:04:46 - 01:04:50]

    He should go to basic scriptures. 


    Robert Brooker: [01:04:50 - 01:05:38]

    But they are also, I mean, these ancient texts are also super confusing. Well, yeah, maybe. But I think this different issue, it's like a 40 experience, is that he read all these ancient texts and myths and then he tried to apply them to modern life. And I think it was a total failure. I mean, he recognized that the conscious mind was important. He recognized that service, talk therapy, you're sitting with someone, talking has benefits. So, I mean, I'm not saying use important figure, and I think these two things are positive. But the notion of applying ancient text to living model lives, maybe there's. Maybe somehow it can go wrong. Let me put it this way. It may be validity to it, and it probably is, but it can also go wrong. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:05:39 - 01:05:43]

    That brings us to your teaching. So you're visiting, professor? 


    Robert Brooker: [01:05:44 - 01:06:52]

    Well, it's a guest lecture. This is the Budapest business school, which is actually the oldest public business school in the world. I didn't know that either. It's from the. At the 1850s or 1860. Anyway, I'm only there once a semester. It's just one session, basically. But it's enjoyable in the sense of that there are these students who are about 22 years old and they're in, and it's just interesting to hear. I like to start by talking with them and ask them about which they're not really used to their way for me to talk and I would start asking them all these questions and they're a little caught off guard. I think I knocked back on her first and then they started to get into it. It's fun for me to hear their perspective on things. But yeah, that class is more about entrepreneurship and it's really about the broader sense of entrepreneurship, about double look at your life as everybody for jobs and getting offers. It's about how do you think longer term and medium term, and in some cases short term, about having you define the terms of your relationship with the world. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:06:52 - 01:06:55]

    What does it keep you personally to teach them? 


    Robert Brooker: [01:06:55 - 01:08:13]

    I don't know exactly, but it is definitely interesting to hear about, to ask questions to students and just kind of hear how they think about things. Here are the questions. Just to shop a dark look. I'm here talking about stuff. Maybe has an impact or maybe it doesn't have an impact, I don't know. Or maybe some people, sometimes I'll hear from students, they'll find me on LinkedIn and they'll have questions. I just did a Zoom call with one of them a week or two ago, wanted to talk about his career. And by the way, I think it's a really good instinct for a student or a young person. Most people, not necessarily most people, a lot of people there are still take initiative. So the fact that, look, this student biscuits lecturer came and to reach out and want to do a Zoom session, like, I admire that people kind of take that. So I don't know if I'm able to get back to or not. And I enjoy it. I have other reasons to be best once quarter and I'm not sure why. I do have some friends who are like teaching classes and they had to read papers, all that kind of stuff. I'm not sure ready for that, but nor am I qualified for it to be a guest lecturer of a single session. I can do that. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:08:13 - 01:08:16]

    Can we talk about Hungary? And your two books. 


    Robert Brooker: [01:08:16 - 01:09:20]

    Yeah. So as I mentioned, my first business that I started was in Hungary and I was 25 years old and I had all these employees and speak English, so I had to learn Hungarian. Not perfectly, but they could communicate. And they do put up with it and tolerate it and occasionally confuse them with my diction. I do serve all the company board that's based there, but I don't have really any other business there. But I do have a strong cultural connection and I enjoy keeping up with the language. And I did a couple of literary projects. And one of which was, along with a close friend of mine's son, we translated a book about, actually, it was on Gary bestseller from 1920, about the interpretation of the priest. Because I gave. No, I gave you a comment a year or two ago, and that was just, it was sort of know children in dreams from a to know. It's like a dictionary. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:09:21 - 01:09:22]

    Sigmund Freud. 


    Robert Brooker: [01:09:22 - 01:10:00]

    Yeah. And there's some Sigmund Freud that's drawn from. And there's some Chandor Ferrari, who is sort of one of his colleagues, Hungarian psychiatrists, and then the authors various girlfriends. I don't know if they had expertise in dreams, but I think his girlfriends like seeing their names in the book. And then he had the author, Hannah, a grandmother who was a gypsy, sincere, who had interpretations of dreams. So he put it all together. Anyway, that was really just a translation. And I wrote the introduction to it. And then that was the first book. Then the second book, which just came out less than a year ago, was a little bit of a. 


    Robert Brooker: [01:10:00 - 01:13:57]

    This is going back to entrepreneurship, and I have to. And I talked about sort of my appreciation, at least in the US, and democracy, which is so imperfect and has so many problems. There are so many societal problems in the US. I think if you were to ask any entrepreneur, business owner, like all people you interview, it'd be interesting for me, at least, if you ask them how much of their success and where they find a success is due to their own efforts versus the environment that they're in. And this second book that I wrote was really about that. And the specific context was that there was this hungarian artist who was, first of all, he was born in 1899. So he was a young soldier of World War I. And he suffered. There was explosion. So he suffered corporate paralysis of his body. So he had this war injury. He had to rehabilitate himself. And Europe, the 20th century was pretty brutal for most of the 20th century, especially if you're the losing side of the war to major wars, which hubby was anyway. But he, you know, was it tough. So he had the war, and then he had the revolution and the counter revolution and multiple sort of economic depressions that happened. And this artist just kind of had to. He was incredibly talented. His name was Albert Khmer. He couldn't survive just being a painter, but he had to do 20 different things. He had to be like a stage set designer and a furniture designer and a graphic designer and a book designer and this, that and the other thing to kind of pull things together. And he had this whole sort of interesting personal life. And then he emigrated to Chicago in 1940. He sort of saw the writing on the wall and what would happen during the war. And so he left and he ended up being got a job as design director. And doors come in us that make cardboard boxes to be very boring. Well, obviously it's kind of boring because they're a square brown basically. And he was told by the CEO that the art seemed for role in business that I will let you. Your job is to make cardboard boxes beautiful, not just make cardboard extraordinary. And so you pioneer this whole industry of a packaging design that is in so many of the products that we buy every day. And you go with that in super lucky days, for example, like the six pack cardboard, six pack of beer and the cigarette box and all sorts of things that we buy today and the embeds and all these things along with the graphic designs. And so this is a story. It's a story that at least to me is a fun initial story about someone's life. But a lot of it's about appreciation for one's environment and that there's so much glory in the individual and individual accomplishment, individual courage. But if you don't have the right environment that supports that, it's really hard. It's incredibly hard. And I think probably a lot of people that you get, if they're here in the UK or they're in the US or in a lot of countries, I would venture to guess whether they. Well, I'd be curious to what extent thing, but I think so much of people's success are so much part of the environment that they're in than the system that they're in. Or it's a. Here's a conversation at least doesn't have much because there's a role of the individual as well. Not saying it's all environment, but I think it's seriously conversation about the earth's life between environment and individual and many of which have trajectory. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:13:57 - 01:14:18]

    So when I pushed you to tell you what's meaningful in your life, you didn't actually mention writing your books. Yet just now your eyes lit up and you spoke with so much enthusiasm about the books. So it's not something that you see you keep doing because of this. 


    Robert Brooker: [01:14:20 - 01:14:59]

    It's a good question. I'm not sure if I will or not. There are certain, it's interesting, there are a lot of people who, they're a business and then they decide they want to write books. Simply common. A lot of times just hired Ghost Rider to do all the work. I know people have done that. Just like we're talking about. Business owners decide they want to be investors. I'm all for humor resilience and humor versatility. And people saying they want to do really did this well, and they think they can do something else well, that's great. 


    Robert Brooker: [01:14:59 - 01:15:20]

    Oftentimes, does it work or. It's hard and it's hard to be a writer is super. It's very easy to write a book, read a book and say, like, oh, I could write like that. But if you actually try to write, it's hard. It's really hard. And there's successful writers of those who have been writing for decades, and they write every day. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:15:22 - 01:15:24]

    Well, these days, AI to help. 


    Robert Brooker: [01:15:26 - 01:16:21]

    That's true. I think there's nothing wrong with using. My personal opinion, I know you may be a little bit differently. I think there's nothing wrong with using. I haven't tried it myself. I use chat GBT, but I haven't tried. But I think there's something wrong with using AI to write. The point that I'm saying is that, yeah, Mike, but it's fun to have the idea. My experience with writing is that it's very fun to conceptualize the idea. It's fun to do the research. Like, when I was doing this biography, I was interviewing all these people, and I was going to all these archives and draw his art. And then the writing was not quite as fun, but it was still pretty fun. And then all the editing and everything was super tedious. And I'm like, this is a lot of work, and it's not very fun at all. So I might do it again, but we'll see. But it makes me appreciate people who are real writers, who have devoted their careers to writing. Makes me really appreciate these people. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:16:22 - 01:16:25]

    It's definitely hard work. So do you have a sense of purpose? 


    Robert Brooker: [01:16:25 - 01:16:55]

    For me, at this moment in life, my family, my friends, for me, that's left with purpose. And what I'm doing sort of this year, in terms of some of the playful things for me, that feels satisfying. And ask me in a year, I may tell you it's not looking for something new, but I think at the moment, that's satisfied to me. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:16:55 - 01:17:03]

    So how do you think about a fulfilling life? Would you say the life today is fulfilling? 


    Robert Brooker: [01:17:03 - 01:17:57]

    Yeah, I think for the most part it's fulfilling. I'm grateful that as health is not forever, and frankly, also every century, there seems to be some major cataclysm where the world just falls apart and that's not happening. Now? Not yet, but it will happen at some point, probably who does win. So I'm very conscious of that and just grateful for. We have so many problems in the world and in our lives, but I think there's a lot to be grateful for at this moment and Tana and I'm just hold on to it as long as possible. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:17:57 - 01:18:05]

    So can you say gratitude is how you make your life more fulfilling because you approach it with gratitude? 


    Robert Brooker: [01:18:05 - 01:18:48]

    Well, I think there's a lot of science, which I'm sure you're aware of, that the actual expression of gratitude is a huge factor toward tamping that. So there's tempting data will hire this. I am not as systematic as. I mean, the best practice is to like every day you write what you're grateful for. Download the milkmaker somewhere. So I'm not doing that, but I'm doing some, maybe lesser for that. And in the sense of having these kinds of conversations and just reminding myself that having a healthy self and healthy family, a healthy mama loads, is something that two year old. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:18:48 - 01:18:50]

    How do you think about legacy? 


    Robert Brooker: [01:18:50 - 01:19:14]

    People are forgotten very quickly and that people overestimate their capacity for legacy and that even people who are very prominent in their day. So people are prominent in the newspapers all the time, that kind of thing. Most of them, I mean, some of them know, some of them made up people's minds for long periods of time, and then most people are forgotten within a few decades. So it stopped me, your motivator for me, probably. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:19:19 - 01:19:20]

    Robert, thank you so much. 


    Robert Brooker: [01:19:20 - 01:19:21]

    Thank you. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:19:21 - 01:19:23]

    You're wonderful. I am very grateful. 


    Robert Brooker: [01:19:23 - 01:19:25]

    Grateful to you. Thank you.


 
Anastasia Koroleva
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