Sam Bankman-Fried Speaks Publicly, and TikTok's Tragedies

app isn't doing more to protect them. Meanwhile, the CEOs of Earn Your Leisure are here to explain how their financial literacy media platform is selling out venues from m s G to the Royal Albert Hall. The first black Rock chief executive, Larry Fink, saying earlier today the most crypto companies will probably fold in the wake of f t X is collapsed. This, of course, during the interview

in the New York Times Deal Brooks Summit. This is of course now we see that s Bankwin Freed has taken to the virtual stage, appearing at the event as

we speak, and passation. Ai Usk is here with all the latest some headlines coming from that event, some brkminfreed saying he, to his knowledge, f t x u u S platform is solvent, and overall that he made a lot of mistakes as the CEO of f t X. You have him first answering your question, or early in the program answering question by Andrew Ross Sorkin about gentleman a letter. He was reading a letter from a gentleman who lost his life savings, and then he asked Sam

Bankman free to answer to that letter. And that's when Caroline he had said that f t x U S he to his knowledge, was solvent and you could withdraw today if they allowed for it. Now he's starting to talk a little bit about f t X the international business. We know he also had that interview with Axios over the last twenty four hours or so where he talked about getting those licenses around the world very quickly and the issues that have resulted from those international licenses that

have been accumulated so quickly. I would also say that, you know, he started off with some of the things that he has said before. He is deeply sorry that he had wished he had done certain things differently, but it was only a month ago when he was excited about the prospects for f t X. So the tone he's been taking here is a pretty solemn, pretty somber and apologetic, I would say, is the first way he's coming off the bat. Yeah, there's certainly a level of

contrition from Sam Bankman Freed right as you know. He says that he has mistakes that if he wish you could go back, he could change really early exchanges. Snali will continue to bring the headlines as they crossed. But what are the key questions that we want answered by SPF On stage, Andrew Starkin had acknowledged that the money here, the dollars where everything had gone. They might get into

here the details of all of those transactions. Let's see how deep they get, but certainly they're starting with a bigger issue at play here. Will we get those answers about where the money went, particularly only the eight billion dollar hall in their reality. Shana Essek will keep us appressed of what's happening in that particular interview. Meanwhile, though, we just want to turn our attention to a huge story here on Bloomberg News today. A security concerns of

a different type TikTok. They keep growing, and South Dakota is acting on it, banning TikTok on its government employee devices after the governor so that the social media apps ownership by a Chinese company poses a national security threat. This comes as today's Big Take is out too, and on different kinds of security concerns, this time surrounding children's

safety on the platform. It was the front cover of this week's Business Week and was a real deep dive into some particularly heart wrenching stories, and I must warn you involve the death of some children. Greenberg's Olivia carvill is with the story and joins us now Olivia. It

was a devastating read for anyone with any emotion. But I'm sure also of exact tives that need a business such as TikTok, then in many ways get singled out because of certain trends that occur on the platform that children who are too young consume and then are in some ways affected by. Just talk to us about how you came across the story and the reporting out of it. Yeah, I mean, we've been seeing cases of children who are too young to be able to access social media platforms

having devastating consequences. Last year we saw Francis Hagen testifying in Congress about Meta and Facebook and Instagram and the mental health harms that it's been causing teenagers, particularly young girls. I also noticed that we were seeing a number of children dying participating in trending challenges on platforms, and I wanted to get a sense of what happens inside some

of these companies when the worst case scenario occurs. So when an eight or nine year old child dies participating in an online deer or a trending challenge, how does the company respond? And as social media to blame in any of these cases, I think that question of liability or responsibility over these deaths is a really big one, and we've seen lawsuits filed in the US recently trying

to raise that question in the courts. Oliver, you outline two specific cases of children who died carrying out something or emulating something they saw on the TikTok platform. Um I would encourage our global audience to go and read that story. But you also report on the response from within TikTok sources that the company explained to you what

executives did next. Could you talk us through some of that, I was connected with more than two dozen individuals who worked on TikTok's trust and safety team to really try and get a sense of how TikTok internally handles these situations. The company has a trust and safety team, you know, thousands strong. They have about forty thou content moderators looking at the videos that are posted on TikTok on a

daily basis, taking down anything problematic or potentially harmful. They have strict policies and guidelines set up to protect children, and so the platform has created a number of safety mechanisms to try and keep kids safe. But children are smart and they know how to side set those safety restrictions.

So in terms of the videos I was seeing more recently that have been linked back to the blackout challenge, kids have started to misspell the words or come up with different hashtags or different code names in order to avoid those safety restrictions and keep this challenge trending. We're interestingly went to our own audience via Twitter and asked them, look,

how can social platforms such as a TikTok become safer? Interestingly, the majority of it's only forts called for more regulation, age verification, came in at just twenty four point five. What's notable as the statistics in your story, more than us children have a cell phone by the age of twelve. Half of all kids from eight to eleven in the

UK of viewing TikTok content daily. Is there a technological manner in which these sorts of platforms such as TikTok can make sure that someone who's claiming to be thirteen is actually thirteen. Yeah, and that's a really important point to remember that children who are thirteen and younger, or children who are under thirteen and not supposed to be

on these platforms. Legally, there's laws set up to prevent kids from being on platforms like TikTok, But unfortunately it's very hard to figure out how old a user is. How do you tell the difference between a fourteen and a fifteen year old. It's hard for humans to do that,

let alone to train artificial intelligence to do it. So there have been companies that have recently been set up trying to tackle this particular issue, the issue of age verification, which is something that all social media platforms are facing, and these third party providers are offering software that can actually tell when it's a child or when it's a teenager,

and they're relatively accurate. So I was talking to a number of these providers trying to get a sense of how does the software work, what can you actually do? And unlike facial recognition technology, which is trying to identify the individual in the photo, this software is just looking

at that face and guessing an age. I sent them a video of a nine year old girl who died participating in one of these challenges on TikTok, and it took that software three seconds to detect her age said she was ten years old, and she died three months before her tenth birthday. All right, Bloomberg's Olivia Carvill just just excellent reporting. I encourage the audience to read that on Bloomberg dot com, the Terminal and in Business Week.

Just great detail. What's happening with the TikTok platform. Apple CEO Tim Cook is doing the rounds in Washington, meeting with top Republican lawmakers as the company seems to forge ties with the GOP ahead of the party's takeover of the House early next year. Now, this is all according

to people familiar with the visit. Interesting timing given the recent tirade from one Elon Musk about Apple's dominance for its app store, and all the more intriguing is Elon Musk suggested he was actually at Apple headquarters today with Tim Cook. Our very own Mark German is here with the latest intriguing Indeed, just talk to us Mark about well, first and foremost the visit itself from Tim Cook. Yeah, clearly Cook is having a very busy week. He's scheduled

to meet with some top DC lawmakers. Obviously, he has Elon Musk in Cupertino at the Apple Park headquarters earlier today around lunchtime. They went through a walk through the campus. Obviously we all know what they talked about. I'm curious to know if Musk asked for special pricing on the app store. But in terms of this DC meeting, he's scheduled to meet with Jim Jordan's. He scheduled to meet with darryl Issa and some of these lawmakers cities that

is meeting with. They're going to be at the top right of the GOP when they take back the House next year, so it's important for Cook to rebuild these

relationships given the changeover happening in Congress. Obviously Apple is going to continue to be under a lot of scrutiny right whether it's the Twitter situation, free speech, content moderation, whether that has to do with the app store and the fees that you know some developers aren't happy with obviously at the Epic Games trial UH several months ago, but that still remains ongoing. Privacy and security, the environment.

Clearly many different issues that both Apple and Congress are overlapping with and are probably going to continue to discuss for years ahead. Obviously there's the efforts to sort of rein in on tech giants overall, so it's important for Cook to get in there and have these relationships with the top lawmakers. We should point out we ofst Apple, if Ela Mosque was telling the truth or or whether he was in Apple HQ or not. My understanding his

Apple didn't respond to that request. Maybe you can clarify. The other big story, of course is China and what's happening in Jong Joe. Give us the latest around iPhone fourteen pro production there. Yeah, regarding Musk and his visit to Apple today, I have no reason to believe that that visit didn't happen. I mean, I think it's accurate. It looks like Tim there and from what I've heard, uh, you know, Musk is there or was there earlier today.

I know Musk likes to prank a lot on Twitter, and you know, tweet things that made maybe the public wouldn't necessarily believe or if not entirely accurate. But I don't think this one was inaccurate at all, to say the least. In terms of the iPhone fourteen, we're hearing that there's going to be a unit declined from the

original ninety million to something north of eighty million. That's a combination of the riots and the COVID impact on the iPhone fourteen Pro factory, but also people not buying the regular iphon fourteen and iPhone fourteen plus the Pro models in quantities that Apple maybe initially anticipated. But I think things are starting to turn around. I actually ordered an iPhone fourteen Pro from a carrier, Verizon, earlier this week,

and that scheduled to arrive in mid December. So depending on where you're buying from, I think things are they're going to improve the next few weeks. Alright, Bloomberg's Mark German, thank you very much. Let's stick with Apple dig into it all with Shannon cross I, t hardware analyst at Credit Sweets who covers Apple, among other things. She joins

us from the Credit Swiss anual Technology conference. Shannon, I was reading your research and you point out that if you had tried to buy an iPhone thirteen at the same time last year, you'd get it much more quickly then if you try to buy an iPhone fourteen Pro model right now Christmas period two. What's going on for Apple? Well, I mean, clearly there are issues with with production, and you know, everybody's seen the videos and and what's going

on in China right now. I think Apple is working as quickly as they can to help box Con and Hanhai basically Reese Art production. UM. I would say they have people on the ground that are they're trying to

help the employees and and and fix some of the issues. UM. But you know, Apple did put out a press release UM a few weeks ago basically saying there was gonna be some some challenges with supply, and you know, I think what we're looking at basically is a situation where right now, if you order an Apple dot com, you're going to get your phone before the end of the year.

So I'm watching to see when that actually shifts into January, and at that point, then that revenue is not going to actually hit in the December quarter and it'll actually shift over into the March quarter. You know, I think I don't think at this point we really seem to demand destruction. I think that the bigger issue that you're

seeing right now is just a supply issue. You have an outperform rating on the stock hunt eighty four dollar price target that's well above the hundred forty eight where we are now at the moment, Shannon, just talk to us about the risks to the outside of the downside here?

Is it more likely? Are you worried not only about the supply chain headaches but sort of the pr hit that a company such as Apple has by having so much a supply chain in China and indeed the sort of human cost of that, or is that ultimately not a key concern for you? Well, look, I think it's it's always been a risk for app for Apple. I mean, Apple has a very good relationship with governments around the world.

They employ an awful lot of people, and there's like a billion seven people are a billion that would be a lot millions of people that are employed around the factory area. And it's not just the factory, right, It's it's the shop down the street that makes the widget that goes on the phone, and then the one that makes the glue. And you know, they have a really strong ecosystem of production. And and it is a risk because whenever you have something in one area, you know

you're you're gonna be it's susceptible to issues. But you know, I think Apple has shown during the pandemic um that they were able to come in with their partners and manufacture. They have a lot of partners that help them with the manufacturing. They are shifting some manufacturing to India, although that will take a long time. I mean the way

it's been described as you know, it's spent. They've spent fifteen years building a supply chain in um in China, and you can't just you know, rip and replace that overnight. And I don't think they would want to. I mean, China is an important market for them as well, so you know, from the standpoint of the Chinese government, it's important. And then to keep people employed, and then from an output perspective, you know, obviously they're they're pretty reliant at

this point. Shannon, We've been excited to have you on because you cover the world of hardware, but that encompasses many companies. A name that's jumped out in me is HP Inc. And up to six thousand jobs cut over the next three years. What's your assessment of job cuts in the world you cover, and and and also just financial discipline in response to kind of a slow down in the end markets. You know, it's essentially we're having So this is the credit sweez Um. It's our twenty

six annual conference that we're holding out here. We have hundred employees or employees attendees and actually um I interviewed the PO of HP today. So you know, I think HP is in a in an interesting situation. You've come out of the pandemic where uh PCs were elevated and everybody went out. You know, you had a hybrid work and so people needed a PC, they needed a printer. And now we're in a bit of a situation where

they're digesting things. But the other thing to keep in mind with HP is that they have certain pillars of growth that they're looking at. And you know, one of that is is peripherals. They bought Polly Polly It closed UM a few weeks ago. You've also got three D

printing UM. They're they're focused on a number of different areas and one of the things that they are doing with this restructuring is really trying to position all the systems and their sales strategy and manufacturing such too that they're able to support where they see growth coming from in the future, because you know, I think they are cognizant of and and frankly investors are cognizant of the

fact that printers are in a secular decline. I mean, they can manage the secular decline and they may be a share gainer there over time, but you know, you've got that. And then PCs are kind of they're going to be in a cycle. We had a big up cycle during the pandemic and now we're in a digestion phase.

So you know, I think mature tech companies, which I tend to cover a lot of, are constantly trying to reduce costs, optimize and manage to the future, because again, when you don't grow very much or you start to decline a bit, you know, the way to drive incremental cash flow and incremental earnings is basically through you know,

cost reductions and optimization of your infrastructure. Talked to us among these companies, Apple, Dell, Pure Storage, A lot of these companies you cover we talk a lot about on the show, the geopolitics, and of course Apple has been swelled in that when it comes to China. Just talked to us and steady seconds about the app Store. How

are all you about the revenues from that? Well, you know, I think the the App Store, there's one of the reasons why it outperformed during the pandemic was because people were home and people are playing games, and and that's a good way that they generate revenue. You know, we're no longer home playing games. I mean this this UM conference that I'm at, it's it's packed with people. People are roaming around, we're you know, interacting, we're traveling, we're

doing other things. The other thing, you know, on an off sort of an um offset to what's going on in China right now, is that you do have a situation where if people are at home and they're you know, because of COVID restrictions, we may see a little bit of an upside there, so you know, I think, Jane, and I'm sorry to cut you off. Shannon. We we we will have you back very soon. But we've got a head off, Shannon Cross, I T hardware analysts at

Credit Suite. Thank you coming up. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says she misspoke when she downplayed the possibility of probing the Musque Twitter deal. More on that next, This is Bloomberg time for talking tech. Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter could be subject to a government review after all. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says she misspoke earlier this month when

you told CBS she saw no basis for scrutiny. On Wednesday, Yellen told an audience at the New York Times event that if there are risks with the deal in general, actually quote, it would be appropriate for SCIFIUS to take a look sifious. That's a reference to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, which Yellen leads. The panel of government officials reviews investments in American businesses by foreign

buyers and decides if there's a national security risks. Now, foreign investors did back masks deal to take Twitter private, and a potential action by Cifius emerge due to concerns over how masks many business interests overlap with US national security priorities. Yellen also stated by the way she couldn't comment on specific reviews or what was specifically being looked at. Welcome back to even meg Technology. I'm Caroline Hide in

New York alongside Ed Ludlow in San Francisco. Now, Damelio family of TikTok fame is announced their first investments from their families Venture capital fund. It's a twenty five million dollar fund recently invested so far in four startups backing mid stage, high growth tech businesses, but they're primarily started

by women and minority founders. Doug rennet is with us is co founding partner of four four four Capital and talk us through this is about what you have said combating systemic inequities and technology and business world by funding the next generation of female and minority entrepreneurs. Talked to us about the brands that you've picked, the companies you picked, and why they stood out for you. Yeah, that's right, Caroline. Um.

We actually have backed six startups to date. We launched a little over two quarters ago and we and we just announced those six startups, and four of them were backed by women founders. When we teamed up myself and my co founding partner Jeff Beacher with the Damelio Family, we really felt it was important to use our collective platform to boost both women and minority founders. They've had a tougher time and have been underrepresented for years um

and that's that's what we've set out to do. It was great to see that of the four women back companies that we uh, women founded companies that we backed, all four of them had founders picked recently on Income Magazine's Top one female founder lists, So that was great validation that we're picking remarkable women founders. Doug, I want to point out that four four four Capital runs the

investment operations right for Damelio Family Funds. To kind of explain your role in this, I find this really interesting, Caroline, at this stage, mid stage, high growth, and we think about the news cycle right now, layoffs across tech, the higher rate environment. What kind of conversations are you having with those mid stage, high growth companies. Yeah, great, question ed. So, first of all, to clarify, we teamed up with the Damilo family to invest our own capital plus third party

capital into these high growth, midstage tech companies. So we're backing third party founders again mostly women and minority founders as they build their companies. When we look at these types of companies right now, we're pretty focused on making sure their streamline and that there's a clear path to profitability. Kind of high burn businesses right now are not in favor, uh, and we kind of keep that in mind when we

look at these businesses. We want to make sure they have strong barriers to entry for competitors and already proven brand with a growing audience. And the idea is once we get involved and Damilos get behind it, we can kind of pour fuel on the fire and hopefully even

help that help them accelerate that growth further. We will focus areas be too, be two CE platforms direct to concede in a retail at Tech of fintech talk to us a little bit about fintech carreas we look across the world of cryptocurrencies that is taking such a hit at the moment. Have you made investments there are you looking to in any way in the future. Yeah, So, first off, we're betting on tech companies with large audiences,

large user groups. If you think about the reach and the brand power of the Demilio's and eventually other celebrities like them, that's we think where we can have the most impact again helping those companies get their products in the and services in the hands of even more people. Uh. In terms of fintech, we're looking pretty broadly at that. We'll do investment platforms of all sorts, finance platforms. We have done one blockchain related investment, which was in the

company Gemini. It hasn't been a specific focus of ours, but again, if we see a strong, fast growing business where we think we can help, will certainly give it, uh, you know, serious thought. I think we're pretty happy actually that we haven't been overexposed in crypto and Gemini. Jemini is quite a big player right in the crypto space. Have you had concerns about that investment? They are a

big player. Uh, it's it's a strong company. They've got a uh you know, strong balance sheet, a lot of cash. We were the first outside money. We came into the first outside round, so I think we're in pretty good position. But it's like a lot of other companies in the space has certainly taken a hit for the time being on valuation. We've been focused all day on the Federal Reserve, j PAL, the outlook for rates, the macro economic headwinds

that are hitting a lot of tech. What is your venture capital view of the world right now going into twenty three. Yeah, well, we take a pretty concervative outlook at that kind of repect to what I referred to earlier. We want to make sure that the companies were investing in our streamlined and ready to uh survive and even thrive through what could be you know, a tough set of quarters coming up here. Um, we don't really try to anticipate what's going to happen, you know, at any

point in or. We just wanted back companies that when the dust settles, they're going to be on top and we'll have great investments on our hands. Okay, four four or four capital co founding partner Doug Rennet, thank you now. Door Dash is laying off about one thousand, two d and fifty people in an effort to cut costs. That's according to an internal memo seen by Bloomberg. The cuts will effect about six percent of the food delivery services workforce.

Door Dash saw its business boom during the pandemic, but it's still unprofitable and more tech companies layoff employees. The US government is taking advantage, though, of the growing pool of talent executives from the US Veteran Affairs Office or on an ambitious mission to recruit top designers and engineers for the agency, but enticing enough workers to jump ship from the private sector to close the gaping government will

be a daunting task. Historically, the US government has long trailed the private sectors pay, driving much of the staffing shortfalls, and crypto firm Kraken is reducing its workforce by people or thirty percent. That's part of its plan to adapt to current market conditions. According to a statement on its blog, Kracken says macroeconomic and geopolitical factors have resulted in lower

trading volumes and fewer clients sign ups. We'll see a little bit of contagion, and whenever one big goes down, I'm sure they are going there is going to be more fallout. I think we have one more big leg down in crypt I think overall the industry is fine. Bitcoin is coming out of this smelling like a rose. Bitcoin funder me fundamentals are intact. We see the same confidence and the full confidence. The biggest lesson here is that the value is in bitcoin and self custody and

not crypto. I think we're going to see some selling off in bitcoin. I think we're going to recover pretty quickly. We see less volatility than we did in the last sarer market. Sometimes you need to battle tests, you need to go through crises. Many big names talking about crypto a more specifically bitcoin of it there, But let's talk about Sam Banglin Freed himself, the f t X founder co founder, an interview being conducted now with The New

York Times. No Notionani Bassa has been monitoring key headlines extraordinary the fact that basically he undermest died, underestimated the scale of the potential crash. He says a rule, he was not nearly cautious enough on marking to market some of the tokens on the various platforms. He thinks the US team took some assets offline, and he says there was improper access to f t X post I roll. What really stood out for you? There are a few

things here. I want to talk about the timeline of events because that is something that Andrew ros Sorkin is drilling in on very deeply. If you all remember, there was a series of tweets. There was a tweet November seven that he had deleted about the assets being fine. Now, he did say that on November six he started to become nervous that f t l X t X would

not be able to fill customer withdrawals. Uh. These timelines are really important here, Caroline, because at the end of the day, and Sorkin also asked, this is his lawyers, Okay, with him being up there speaking about this, this will all be cataloged and looked at the end of the day when you look at what happened here at ft X,

both in November as well as the full year. Now the full year as far as what he had to say, he's really been trying to draw a very big distance between himself and his role at f t X and alamda uh. And it's you know, really apologizing for not knowing and saying maybe he should have known. But Sorkin is also drilling in here very much so on why they're seemingly was a joint roles when it came to assets that they both seemed to have some exposure to.

When I say they both, I mean both Alametera as well as Sam bing Bean Freed, who was a large owner of Ala meter As we now, so a lot of questions here, muddy answers, but a lot of questions still to be worked through. This interview is not over yet. I don't want to give any away any of sort of the magic of television. But when Caroline and I were waitings come on air, there's this question of is he going to turn up? And if he did turn up virtually but as you said, you know, he was

asked what do your lawyers think about this? And he said, oh, I probably shouldn't say anything. He is saying a lot of things, and one of the things he's talking about is a term I haven't heard in a long time, commingling the relationship basically between ft X and Alameda and the crossover of client funds. What was his response on that. This is a very important response, and I'm reading of

the sentence I didn't knowingly commingle funds. Why is that an important statement, because at the end of the day, I wasn't trying to come and go funds, he said, I did not ever try to commit fraud on anybody. So we're going to be looking at a series of events as things go on, as well as intent there. So that is something that he had said that day. You were asking about the Bahamas as well. He this is interesting. He was asked about why certain Alameda employees

had worked together. He had said he had not been living there recently. We don't know how long he has or has not been living there. He had also said that he would not be surprised if sometime I am up there talking about what happened with our representatives, our representatives meaning US representatives. In that statement, he said he has been in the Bahamas for the last year, as we know, though before this crisis had happened, he had been between the Bahamas and the US. He had been

in the DC a lot. I was in d C talking to him just weeks ago, really before this implosion had happened, and he said he'd been running between ft X and the Bahamas, running from FTX in the Bahamas. But he does say that he was asked about his concern about criminal liability here. He's that he had a bad month. But what matters here is millions of customers. He did not really give a straight answer about whether the criminal liability is whether why the reason why he

is not coming to the United States in person. Yeah, he says he thinks he could travel to the US and staying silent won't accomplish any good. I mean, I have to say I've almost vaguely had a little chuckle about co mingling because it came straight after a headline about the fact that a few of them lived altogether, and I couldn't work out whether which bit was commingling. But overall, Shali, do you think it ends up being a wise decision on Sam Batmanfried's part to take a

part in this conversation. Overall is saying f t X did unimpactful things to bolster his own image. I have a lot of questions here again about some of the things he's saying, because on one hand, here you can definitely see him trying to distance himself from the Lameter roles to the ft X roles, which is where the

commingle and question really comes in. There are a lot of questions here about Block five and the collateral between Block FI and f t X. He again block Fire's role lationship was both with Alameda and f t x so what he knew and didn't know there are certain things he should have known as the CEO of f t x UM there He's also speaking about the relationship with Genesis as they tried to pull funds as well.

So a lot of unanswered questions here to your point about you know when you look back at this and is he going to be glad if he spoke publicly. On one hand, he's distancing himself and trying to give his version of the series of events here in real

time as the bankruptcy is going on in the United States. Uh. One really interesting part of this also is Andrew Starkin asked very specifically about whether he worked with the Bahamas as well when it came to any transfers, and he said he wouldn't answer any specifics of that, but he did point to the fact that Bahamas were a key regulator for them and as well as the Joint Provisional

Liquidators here. So a lot of questions also not just about Samming and Freedom his roll up both of these places, but also about his relationship with You West regulators as well as the Bohemian one style bloom Bog scenari bastic, Thank you extraordinary that SPF talking about how he didn't see the extreme scenarios that played out in markets coming Carrow, which yeah, I don't think any of us really saw

this coming, did we either way? Coming up, the ceo s of Earn Your Leisure talk about their media platform and the podcast that's selling out venues like m s G. This is Bloomberg. So most people head to Madison Square Garden for a game from music concert, but now they're

buying tickets to financial literacy podcasts. Market Mondays, a podcast from the financial literacy brand Earn Your Leisure, recently sold out MSG as well as the rural Albert Hall in the UK and Your Leisure or Leisure as you might say, it has more than two million followers on social media, as the creators interviewed some of the biggest names in

finance and entertainment joining us now. I'm very pleased to welcome the CEOs of any Leisure, I said, with our Troy Millings and it's great to have some time with you both. Welcome and thank you. Thank you for having from from our own David Rubinstein, who have you interviewed about building his wealth to talking about people how to make I ra s and wrath sexy and getting involved

your children to invest in them already. Overall, Troy, what are you seeing at the moment in terms of interest in financial literacy at a time where the markets have basically been selling off. Yeah, we're seeing a peaking it. I think what happened during COVID was everybody was home and you know, people were losing jobs and they wanted information, and we just kept in to be at the right place at the right time with the information to provide

to them. Um So people were investing at record numbers, people were making money at record numbers, and to stay with them, and that's one of the things we you know, we've probably put on the forefront is like we're here for the long term, right, We don't want to just be short term traders. We want to give you information that you can change your life, and now only yours, but your families as well. And I think that you're pairing,

of course, coming together in ten. You from an education background, you from a financial background. Already you're an independent financial advisor and been here to Bloomberg in a previous life. Rush talk to us about how much the education is working. How much people are willing to remain invested in, committed for the long term and not be worried by a looming recession, not be worried about the valuations and some of the structs they hold now for life. Yeah, I

mean we always leave with long term perspective. We always leave with you know, balance and not get rich quick scheme type of mentality. So I think that the people that listen to us are more um calm during this this time of turbulence, and they're actually excited because we know that you know, as an investor, you want to buy low and so high. So most people do the exact opposite it. They buy high and so low because of emotions. But when you take emotions out of it,

then you have to use intelligence. So I think that the people that listen to us have a high intelligence when it comes to investing, and they're seeing this time as an opportunity. Troy, I want to come to you because you guys are content creators, right, Let's be honest, your content creators. It's just that like Caroline and are you nerd out on finance, on tech, on markets, on long term? How did you guys come up with this idea, like, where does this come from? Yes, so it was originated

in the classroom. You know, we started teaching young adults about financial literacy. We were used to doing a summer program and at the end of it, they were going to make money, right, We're gonna pay them, and so we've kind kind of felt inclined to teach them about

money if we're gonna pay them. That led to us creating Obviously social media content was led to earn your leisure um and so it's always been to to teach the youth, but at the same time, to you, we realized that adults needed the education, and so that's one of the things we've learned over the course of time is that financial doesn't really have an age, Right, somebody at eleven years old can know something that somebody at twenty years old doesn't know, and somebody at forty years

doesn't know. So we're trying to make sure that it feels encompassent for all ages because everybody can learn. I'm not sure people like to consumerlate of different ways. I like to listen to you on a podcast, people like to view on YouTube. You'd like to have real live events and as you're doing MSG, you're doing at Royal Abbot Hole, your own invest Fest, which is over in Atlanta, which is kind of like music festival meets financial literacy.

From that point, like where does your media platform go, where does your brand go? From here? How do you build it? I think we are building a global media empire and we're looking to produce more content even outside of the realm of financial literacy. So a cooking show, a show about no children, and I think that people now they trust us, and that's one of the hardest things to do is to build trust for the audience.

So now I think we have the credibility to spread the message of not only financial literacy, but a variety of different things. And on a global perspective, As you said, we just came back from London a few weeks ago, so we're seeing the need for financial literacy and business education all over the world, whether it's in Lagos, Nigeria,

whether it's in Kingston, Jamaica, whether it's in London. So this is something that we're very exciting about, you know, carrying the flag of financial literacy to everybody that was left out of the conversation globally. Russian I know you're a sort of social media guy for the duo, but Troy, like, talk to me a little bit about the numbers. Are you monetizing in the way that you expected, How are

the algorithms working for you? What do you think about the way in which you can build on social media at this moment? Yeah, I mean it's very important. If you don't have social media presence, you really don't have a brand UM. And so that's something we knew very very early on, and and knowing that, it was like, Okay, how do we build how do we get more people involved? And so we wanted to make sure that the content

was relevant. A lot of times when we read articles and it's like, all right, this is kind of flunk. We don't really know what's being told, but we made it in a way that was suggestible. It was something that was spoken in the language that people can understand

for people who were overlooked UM. And so that was pretty much our format, and it's led to us have at one point two million subscribers UH, one point to million UH followers on Instagram, over a million subscribers on YouTube, We're about to hit a quarter million on TikTok, so all these avenues of resources that we're using to reach an audience, a global audience, have paid off. Troy mentioned some of the platforms there. I guess my question Rush

had is what's the biggest surprise. What have you learned about how consumers are going to get content in this area? Well, one thing that you know is ironic is that the financial literacy space actually booms during recession times. You would think that that would be the exact opposite, but during times of financial hardship is when people take their education more serious, when people invest in their education, and we

saw that happened during COVID. I also saw it happened in two thousand and eight when I came in as a financial advisor. I came in at the worst economic times since the Great Depression, and that was actually a good time to start my career because it was easy for me to talk about investment because investments were so low.

So we see opportunity in every crisis, and um, right now, in this economic downturn that we're in right now, I think there is an opportunity to educate, to double down on content, and to spread the message because people need it more now. Another all right, earn your leisures CEOs Rashabilau and Troy Millings thank you. The only other better double A carrows you and I. That does it? Maybe it's equivalent. There ain't no bad, sure does it? These are in different ways? That does it? All of us.

For this edition of Bloomberg Technology Thursday, we have Visas CFO to share his outlook for three spending and do not forget to check out our own podcast. If you're busy looking at and listening to earn your leisure, come look at us as well. We're talking all things technology, of course where they are online, on Apple, Spotify and on my heart. So much more to be debating. Go

check out the latest from Sam Bagma Freed. Of course, the interview continues and at the moment he's saying, you went through a congressional hearing and public comment and still couldn't get to a point of offering futures in the US. Fascinating conversation. Yes, so much more to come. This is flame back Wick Wick Wi A Pip Pip Pip