Allen  
Welcome passive traders. Welcome to another edition of the Option Genius Podcast. Today, I am here with someone that's going to blow your mind. I'll give you his name, you probably haven't heard from him. But what he says is going to make a big difference for you. So John S. Pennington Jr. in 2008, co founded a family of private investment funds that by 2021 had over $28 billion of assets under management and completed a successful IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. John then retired that same year but remains a significant stakeholder and is now partner Emeritus at the company. He has been married 38 years with three sons, five grandchildren, and he recently wrote a book which we're going to be talking about called Dollars, Gold, and Bitcoin. It's right here, I could not put it down, you can find it on Amazon and Audible. You guys need to get a copy of this book, because we are not going to be able to talk about everything in this book on this interview. John, thank you so much for being here.

John  
Allen, so good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Allen  
So now I have done. I have heard you speak in the past. And so a few podcasts, I don't should have looked at the episode, but it's one of the past episodes called billionaire lessons. I have talked a little bit and gone over some of the things that you presented on which were covered in your book as well. So it was one of our most popular episodes, really happy that you're here. I just want to get into it. So the book is titled dollars gold and Bitcoin. Now I've already you know, talked about your successful guy you're doing well. Why did you write this book? 

John  
When I retired, some people asked me to speak on stage. And I, you know, I didn't charge them. And I just went to these masterminds and I thought, What do I want to talk about? And, you know, I just I looked at what everyone else talks about. And I thought, well, I got to talk about something different. So I started talking about economics and the Federal Reserve and the strength of the dollar and how, you know, the dollar is just a fantastic product worldwide. And I actually, you know, followed the Federal Reserve and how they promoted the US dollar over the years, and how they nudged people to make their product more acceptable around the world. And I kind of used that formula. In my company, or me and my partner's company, as we grew, we kind of use the same type of tactics that the Federal Reserve and the US government has used over the years to promote their number one product, which is the US dollar. 

And so so it's kind of a, it's kind of reflection of my business history. But it's also a reflection of how I studied and watched the the greatest product ever become the greatest product ever. How did it get there, and then I just kind of wanted to learn from the best. So I just kind of use those tactics with me and my partners to kind of push our business kind of the same way. So that's why I kind of wrote it. 

Allen  
Cool. Now, you know, the first time I heard you speak, I've heard you speak twice. And the first time and second time, I'm listening to you, and you are taking these what seemed to be very random events around the world. Yes. It's like, Oh, this guy said this, made this comment. And then this person visited this country, and then nothing happened. And then that happened. And then you took all of these to me, they were just random, you know, like watching the news. You story after story. But you took them and you whoa, this intricate, detailed story that linked them all together. And I'm like, Whoa, how does this guy think like this?

how do you how do you come up with this? ,

John  
I don't I don't know. I just I just I think as an entrepreneur my whole life, I started my, well, my career, but when I was a young man, I just was really slow reader. I wasn't a good, I wasn't a good student. And I knew that I could not survive in corporate America. I just knew it would eat me alive. It didn't I just wouldn't fit there. And so I knew I had to be my own boss. And that means I probably need to just start my own companies. And so I remember looking in the mirror and this is I think I was 17 or 18. And I said to myself, these words and and I I've repeated this in the mirror, every year, 10 times a year, whatever, I don't know how many for 30 something 40 years, but I said this to myself in the mirror of John, you're not afraid of being poor. And John, you're not afraid of being old, you're just afraid of being old and poor at the same time. And that is stuck with me to push myself in the areas of, I have to start my own business, I have to save money to take risk, right. And so I started 14 businesses in my lifetime ish. And three, I've made a lot of money on obviously, the one I did with the funds and still in it made a lot of money, I three I've lost money on and the rest of them in the middle, you know, I made some money on them, they were pretty good for a while. But you know, so over those periods of time, when you'd make good money on one, you have to save the money and live beneath your means. So that when the next opportunity comes up, you have a war chest to go and try again. Because if you try a business, and it doesn't work, you lose the time and money. And sometimes I might, I've had a couple of businesses in a row not work. So you spend 910 months getting a business launched, and then you wait six, seven months, it doesn't work, and you go on men 18 months later, and now you're kind of out of money if you didn't save, and then you have another idea come up, and then you try that idea. And that's going to take a year, year and a half to figure out and spend all the money. So you always I always live below my means way below my means so that I would always have a war chest to take risk until I really, really, really made it. And when I first started my first fund in 2004, and then my second fund in 2007. And my third fund in 2008. You know, I didn't really know if it was going to work, work, work work work until about 2013. And up until that time, I was driving a car with 200,000 miles on it, you know, so but once I got there, then I got a Mercedes, you know, a small number, say a used Mercedes kind of thing. And so, but I was always I always lived beneath my means because I just knew I had to be a entrepreneur. So what I'm getting at was my business antennas, my business antennas my whole life since I was 17. I had been up trying to read listen to receive things, right? And when I graduated college in 8898, with an economics degree which if you have an economics degree, there's not a lot of really, you're not trying to do much right unless you go on to get a masters or PhD trained. Well, what do you I'm saying, right? I didn't matter I had a degree in and I wanted to start my business. My first business that I started right at night, not my first business but but my first successful business right out of college is in 1989 Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, they took down the wall in Germany, there used to be a wall right down the middle of Berlin, a physical wall, and they took it down. And before that time, kids in Eastern Europe could not get American products. They can watch American TV or watch American movies, but they couldn't get made in USA products. And when that wall came down, there was a flood demand because the US was like this golden child. And everyone loved the US for about 99 About 95 They just love love, love anything made the USA was the best. And they wanted American huge Levi's. Or they want American Levi's jeans because Mr. Levi Strauss in San Francisco was the first guy to ever make denim jeans. And he did him with a button flying and the original was the button fly 501. Well, all over the all over the world. These were being sold for hundreds of dollars. They were a fashion gene but in the Western United States, we'd had them for 100 years they were worth jeans. We grew up with them in high school, right but so anyway, two of my partner's eventually moved to Southern Germany and I stayed in in Utah, and I collected us Levi fiber ones all over the United States, mainly the Western United States, cleaned them up, sewed them had seamstresses, scrubbing them, cleaning them up taking the stains off of them sewing, and it shipped to my partners in Germany, and they sell them to Prague and all over the western eastern states. So I could buy new fiber ones on sale for 1499 in Utah, and they would go for 100 $120 in profit. So I had my antennas up. And so when I found out early on in Ada or early on at nine that we had a friend over there in Europe saying that people were at you know, walking up to him on the street trying to buy his jeans on down for $100 100 US dollars. And we could buy them used at a thrift store over here for $6. What's the probability I can make a business so we I ran this business for nine years From 89 to about 1988 1998. We ran this was my first real big, huge business. And it was booming. I mean, we were doing a lot of jeans. I think our best year total sales was $8.5 million. US Levi's, I think that was 9094, maybe 95. Somewhere in there. But it was the fast business. And I had, you know, seems so what I'm trying to say is, you asked me the question, how do I think this way, right? If you have your business antenna up, always trying to receive some information, and someone tells you, hey, people in Austria are paying $100 For usually buy 501 jeans, and you live in a place where you can buy them for $10. You have to think of how do I make that into a business? What's the probability? Not the prediction? What's the probability I can make that into a business? And that was my first real run into business employees in Germany employees here. It was really a fantastic, great, like classic arbitrage. Yep. Just yeah, that's right. We were