SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Welcome to the Cut the Tie Podcast. Hello, I'm your host, Thomas Helfrick, and I am on a mission to help you cut the tie to whatever it is holding you back from success. And that success is defined by you and no one else. Otherwise, you're chasing someone else's dream. And today I am joined by Mr. Michael J. Frank.

unknown: 0:14

Michael, how are you?

SPEAKER_00: 0:16

Thank you. I am good. I woke up today. I'm a happy guy.

SPEAKER_01: 0:20

Above ground, winning. Um it's I mean, that's a simple that's it. Next question.

SPEAKER_00: 0:28

I'm a half full guy for sure.

SPEAKER_01: 0:30

The glass is always half full. I'm uh you can always refill it. So drink it all. Um and anything worth doing is worth overdoing, Michael. All right. General rule of me. Michael, take a moment.

SPEAKER_00: 0:43

Introduce yourself and what it is you do. Uh Michael J. Frank out of uh Milburn, New Jersey, a former floor trader and a specialist who exited to a public company a couple decades ago, been mentoring startups. I've uh mentored lots of people, a father of three, married for 36 years, and now a co-founder with two millennials in a community called Guilder. We provide access to mentors, tools, and events to help build a successful company. We believe we can empower anybody at any stage of their career. I'm on uh five advisory boards. One is a nonprofit, the rest are for-profit, and I run a small fund that called Novation Ventures. Excuse me, I'm a principal in a small fund called Novation Ventures, and we invest in brain health startups. So it's a neurodevelopment, neurodegenerative things like Alzheimer's Autism, AHD, Tourette's. I like working. They never retire, and I work uh six or seven days a week. I enjoy it.

unknown: 1:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:40

You know, it's funny. A lot of the unscrews I interview, they have friends who've retired, and some have exited this planet, and others have just lost their mind. They're like, yeah, I'm I'm never shutting it down. It's too much fun. And I think I honestly think that's because if you have fun doing it, it's not work. People call it work because you're not golfing, but golfing can be frustrating. I mean, like, I don't know about you, but I can only go so many times in a week without wanting throw my clubs in the woods. I'm not leader at that.

SPEAKER_00: 2:04

Yeah, I'm not uh spending five hours golfing. I I think I enjoy more riding in the golf course and the commodity ship than the golfing. You can golf really well, and then you can not even, at least for me, not even hit the ball properly. Um I had a grandfather who had a business and success, very successful business in the uh East Coast and record stores and audio, and he sold the company and thought he's gonna go paint, and he died not too shortly after. I have a bunch of friends, I call them pips, previously important people. Um, they are on the golf course, retired. They think they're happy. Um, I think they're brain dead and know nothing about anything, including AI or anything but but what they read on whatever you know channel they're watching or something. And yeah, I kind of feel bad for them. Like they're just they're done. Like they're just stepping into the grave, and I'm not I'm nowhere near there.

SPEAKER_01: 2:57

Yeah, what's interesting, right? And and we'll we'll get to your stuff, but I think that's a good point because it sets the tone for you and what we're about to talk about in your journey. But but I think what I think the sadder thing is, is like, and and this ties to what you're doing, I believe, is that there's so much knowledge as being a successful person getting there. The to not actively go give that wisdom, let's say not knowledge, but wisdom to a group that's hungry for it, to me seems just criminal. Like you should definitely do that. And because there's a phase in your life, you know, I'm I'm just starting almost at 50 where I I want to mentor people because I've learned a lot and and I'm doing I do so. I love it. So let's start with this, first of all. Before we get on your journey, please define success. What does that mean to you today?

SPEAKER_00: 3:43

I think it's different than what I thought it meant when I was younger. Success to me meant when they're younger that they had the Porsche turbo and vacations and spend ridiculous money on stupid things. Um now, to me, doing the right thing all the time, working with people, building guilder and investing in people that are gonna make a difference. Um but success to me, having dinner with the family and them around, and hopefully, some grandkids one day where I could be a um I'll call it an ice cream and candy grandfather.

SPEAKER_01: 4:20

Oh yeah. Get them jacked up and here you go. You always wanted this as you're a kid.

SPEAKER_00: 4:25

Yeah, yeah. Now I I, you know, like raising children is freaking hard and it's expensive, and there's lots of issues that go on. And and we've sort of done that, and now being empty nesters, I've jumped completely. I was a trader and sold a company, but I jumped completely into sort of something different, and it took me a long time to get up to speed. Um, and my wife has found success working at the JCC in a memory care unit where she provides programming for people with memory issues, which is scary. And maybe Novation Ventures invest in someone who comes up with one of the pieces to the answer to Alzheimer's, which is like super scary to me.

SPEAKER_01: 5:05

Yeah, it is. We think that one offline. I got some ideas on that. So uh give give me a little bit about your journey. And what was the biggest uh metaphoric tie, so to speak, to to achieve that success you just defined?

SPEAKER_00: 5:20

I went to Northeastern thinking I was gonna be a pharmacist. Um Boston, great town, love it. Um took a job at the local liquor store. I was more interested in doing drugs than learning to be a pharmacist and chasing skirt and doing the things that many people do in college, maybe less so now because you know I don't know, maybe I was just spoiled and didn't understand it or immature. Um and I finished up at Fairley Dickinson. And while my brother was a couple years ahead of me at Fairley, he met his uh wife to be, and the father-in-law was involved in the stock market, and I started understanding, and my brother spent one year on the trading floor and made twice what my dad made working 25 years for a company. And I said to myself, oh my God, this is me. And I started riding in the back of this car. I wasn't allowed to talk. You know, going every day from the Fort Lee area into the American Stock Exchange with the top-down, with all the buses spewing at the time and type of thing. Uh, but I got to learn and I got to go on the floor, and uh eventually I took some money and some borrowed money and went down to the Philadelphia Stock Exchange and experienced uh a place where the harder you work and the better you do, the you make a lot of money. And it was like, what is this? And it's it's very hard to describe. And I try and point to people like trading, the look of trading, you could sort of see it on some of the news channels. Sometimes they show them yelling and screaming. But there was a famous movie, a comedy called Trading Places with Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd, and it's got a lot going on in there with the social stuff, but there's a great trading scene there in the commodities pit and the juice crop comes out. But you know, trading is not easy. There's two aspects to it it's uh the math and understanding it and volatility and and skew and ketosis and all these things that would be hard to describe, but trying to manage risk and being in a crowd and adding liquidity. Um but the second part is trying to do this. Like I've seen really smart people, PhDs come down, but standing in the crowd all day and yelling and trying to get people's attention and get a trade done and making sure it clears and making sure you keep bookkeeping on it, you hedge it properly and you get your hedges off is a whole nother animal. Uh so both of them together are hard to do. Um and it sort of doesn't exist anymore. They've gone completely electronic. I don't think it has the same liquidity it it did in the past. I understand now with Bitcoin and all the currencies that um those pits in other countries are very, very lucrative. And this almost makes me want to sort of come out of retirement and go back go back to the floor in some way.

SPEAKER_01: 8:00

Yeah. Well, you can you can do it digitally at any point, right? You've got to get the right right technology set up behind you. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 8:06

But it's a the floor game is completely the digital floor game is completely different. But um on the floor itself for liquidity with all these customers, so we'll see.

SPEAKER_01: 8:15

So so the the metaphor tie, so to speak, has been the move from that high-intensity wealth environment to uh where you are today, where it's a different focus and helping and and and it's just it's a completely different lifestyle. Is that the fair that it's getting getting through that? Or what will how would you define that tie?

SPEAKER_00: 8:34

You have like I did okay, and I had an exit to a public company, so I can't complain. And they came off the floor, um, still had huge positions that were still winding down. We sold us, I sold the specialist books. Um, everyone was super happy with bonuses and everything. And some people moved on, and some people uh went to the other company. Um, and then I got to coach all three children and all of exports here in town and be around a lot, so that was great. And then after that, I was searching for something to sort of do properly. Um, and you go through an exploration of like, you know, what am I gonna do? I I I know my skill set doesn't sort of exist anymore. I can't apply it. So I have to try and retool myself and uh and retool my brain. And I was there for 9-11 at the American Stock Exchange, and uh that definitely messed with my head for sure. In hindsight, I can understand. Um, then I didn't understand it. And it was right in the middle of my exit. So trying to find something and do something um and make some money and feel good about yourself because no matter how much money you have or don't have, if you're not productive and doing things and helping people and making some money, you quickly become disillusional and you know, start just going down rabbit holes and stuff like that. And I sort of ran into a lot of people that were not who they said they are liars or cheaters, telling you this and that. And I went down a bunch of different things and lost some money realizing that uh I was looking for something, but it certainly wasn't gonna be with those people.

SPEAKER_01: 10:10

Yeah. Well, I know typically there's a lot of moments that lead up to saying, I'm done with this, I'm going on to the next thing. Do you remember your exact moment?

SPEAKER_00: 10:19

No, it was a cumulation of just what the F am I gonna do with myself? Like, like eventually you're just sort of um doing things. I eventually um in the office I was in after selling the company, I hooked up with a guy and we built Investance, which was a digital wealth management platform commonly known as a Robo Advisor. We're B2C, we moved to B2B, we landed this giant bank, UOB out of Singapore. They weren't uh they were still doing transactional business, and everyone else in the most of the world in the US was on asset-based stuff, so guaranteed income versus waiting for commissions. Um, and we built this platform, and I thought, you know, we're gonna sell this thing for a hundred million bucks, we're just gonna kill it. Um, except the UOB bank, if they have 10 people on a panel and all 10 of them don't say yes, and nine say yes, they don't move forward so quick. On the trading floor, if you have a 60 or 70 percent confidence in a trade, like you're just laying it on, like you're assessing it all the time. Um, and then in the middle of that, uh as far as gum says shit happens, and the CEO's wife got pancreatic cancer, and that is not a good thing. Um, and anyone who typically has it is very tough. Um, and that was the sort of the end of the company. And I had no objections to him going home and spending time with the family and doing whatever he could. Like I'm like, yeah, me family first. I always tell my children growing up, I'm like, the family's us. It has nothing to do with that big house we're in or the little house we're in or anything. Like, I'll be happy with you guys anywhere, like as long as I'm around my family. Um, so what from there I started mentoring startups out of new chip and other things, and that was definitely worthwhile.

SPEAKER_01: 12:04

I love that. When you when you start making the move, right? Uh talk about the how. What were the things you had to do different, change? I mean, I mean, I asked people, like, you it could be I had to stop spinning this, I had to go to therapy. Well, like, how did you how did you make the move? Because I mean that's a big one, right? To go from what you identified as thought to shit, what what's next? Like, give me some hows.

SPEAKER_00: 12:27

Um, you know, the investments gig after being in the office and sort of thinking I'm trading and I'm gonna do good, and I got this money and I'm smarter than the average bear. Like, you quickly just get hit over the head on a regular basis. Um, and those are just bad thoughts to always have. Like when you think you're faster or better, like whatever. Like, no, there's lots of smart people in the world, and uh, we find that all the time. Um, but the investments thing, like we had something, we were too green in like the startup ecosystem, not understanding how to raise capital properly and how hard that is to build a funnel and and other things. And uh I could point out a dozen things that the CEO did that in hindsight, you know, I was trying to get him not to do that, but just let, you know, like I I rest, I rest some of the fault of the downfall of that on me and us. Um, but from there it was, you know, trying to build something else. So I started mentoring startups out of New Chip and had a bunch of shares from doing that. And uh I had met the reason I got to New Chip was I was at a uh event in Hoboken called Propellified, right on the water, looking at New York. It's beautiful, it's all startups. And I had met uh Mehesh, another millennial. Um I work with all these millennials and they work really hard. And we formed uh he was over at New Chip and I went over to mentor and I just found it satisfying. Like I'm just talking with people and startups, and maybe they're not looking at me for the sort of the math, but like, you know, building things is hard and like waking up every day is hard. And when you're trading and you get beat up trading, and you got to come in the next day, knowing you're probably getting beat up because you already saw what the stock market's doing the after hours of your particular stock, it's freaking hard, like showing up, like you're you're already taking, you know, a five-figure loss or something or whatever it might be. Um, but I learned to just get up and go in every day, like you know, wake up and do it, and like, you know, gotta do it and just do the best you can. And on the trading floor, as good as you are one day, maybe you're not so good the next day, and that humbles you on a regular basis. And it allows you to understand that uh nothing is easy. There's a lot of lot of bumps in the road. And from there, when a new chip actually collapsed, they'd taken on a lot of debt and they were trying to sort of growth hack it at the wrong time. And at the time, Mahesh was being offered like the CEO job to go in there. And I was sort of mentoring him at the same time a little bit. I'm like, nah, you don't want to touch that. That's like so dirty already. They're just gonna go into bankruptcy or something, and then your name is gonna be involved. Um, so he lost a significant amount of shares. I lost way less shares. Um, but I had met two people, Brian and Tiger, who worked there. And Brian was running all the mentors, and I was one of the original mentors, but now they had, you know, I don't know, thousands of them. And I'm like, what are you gonna do? And you know, they didn't even get paid the last two weeks. Um and we formed Gilder out of that, like after a while. And I get to work with uh Brian out of Chicago and Tiger out of Missoula, Montana, and uh they work hard, like even harder than me. I think Brian's probably working 80 hours a week. He's got a second company, a PhD wife, a one and a half-year-old baby. Like, I'm not even sure how he does it sometimes. Um, I my guess is 80 hours minimum week. That's my guess.

SPEAKER_01: 15:45

Wow. I have I have a question. So when you were doing your trading, was there ever a number in your head? If I hit this, go into treasury bills, 5%, I'm good.

SPEAKER_00: 15:54

Yes. And I hit that number. And then that was my next question, and then what'd you give them? And then I got in my head that, and I'm married 36 years, and I got in my head that and I don't think my ever discussed this, but I got in my head that I needed enough money to say I've had enough, and here's your half. And that was a downfall. That was really, really bad because I had a great wife and a great family, but you start, you know, you exited, you got this cash, you're like, I want I want a younger wife. I want a wife that maybe wants to do things more often than this wife or something like that. And uh that was a downfall. So I started sort of trading differently, and I realized that maybe the money I made wasn't from my particular trading, but was from the overall setup of all the traders and managing risk. And maybe I wasn't the trader that I thought I was. Not maybe, I definitely wasn't the trader I thought I was, and that was costly that thinking, and not realizing that being married to someone who's there all the time when going through 9-11, and that's just a whole nother story. But I actually in 2020 got sick, and then you know, it just whole thinking sort of changes when you think that maybe you're not gonna wake up the next day um and you realize how important family really is, family and friends and keeping them close. As well as getting rid of any people that are not positive and good for you. Um you have to exercise them like cancer and just get rid of them and not do that. And and 20 years ago, we gave up watching any news whatsoever, whether ABC, DFR, uh we didn't need to see the mayhem and stuff. That's it. We just won't watch it.

SPEAKER_01: 17:51

No, you're you're uh you're spawn. You know, it's like a water source, right? We all drink from it, but one toxic element into it affects everyone around it, and you got you gotta get rid of it.

SPEAKER_00: 17:59

And sometimes I recently had a friend of 30 years who every time I spoke to him, I felt like shit after my friend. And finally I said to him, called through one time, like, hey, we're done. So what do you mean? I said, please don't call me again. I'm never gonna call you again. I feel lousy every time I get done. Maybe you're trying to you're not doing this on purpose, but um, we're done. And that was that. And I felt good. Like uh, like, all right, I don't need to have some anger. Yeah, whatever. Like, I don't I don't need that.

SPEAKER_01: 18:29

No, you you're you're right. And so that I guess very, I mean, maybe uh, you know, kind of the uh thing I always ask is kind of advice for listeners, would that be the advice, or would you have something else for them?

SPEAKER_00: 18:40

I think advice is there is no problem that's insurmountable. Uh talk to your friends, your mentors, older people with the experience. Get up every day, put your pants on or your or your skirt on or whatever it is you want, and go and go, or both, and go and go do something and get out there. So I have a bunch of friends. Um, I have a friend who just inherited a bunch of money and he thinks he's sort of going to retire. And I'm like, you can't retire. I said, just go go take a job, go to the church or the synagogue, soup kitchen, home depot, Trader Joe's, go work 20 hours a week, keep yourself busy, keep yourself in the game. Very important as you get older to uh wake up, have something to go to, to do something, and not sit around listening to whatever it is on you know these talk shows and things like that. That stuff will just rot your brain. Uh, just like thinking that you're gonna golf every day, maybe physically for your body, it's okay, but you have to have other stimuli and other things.

SPEAKER_01: 19:41

Yeah, you do. And I, you know, the idea is the advice I've heard from lots of guys is take a sabbatical, have a shit ton of fun, and get back in. Like so go for a year and go do something fun. All the stuff on the list, and then come back in and figure something else to go do.

SPEAKER_00: 19:56

So we are in we are in an age of AI and people don't understand it, but when electricity came about, it changed the human race. When the computer came about, it changed the human race. Two significant things. AI, I believe is even bigger than that. And I see it being implemented everywhere in all our startups at Gilder, and it's gonna change the world for the better. And maybe like in the future, I don't know if you watch Star Trek, but like in the future, they have the replicators, they have unlimited energy, unlimited food, and all this stuff. And maybe that's where we're eventually heading with AI, and hopefully not Terminator, where they realize that we're humans are dumb and that they they need to get rid of us for our sake.

SPEAKER_01: 20:42

There'll be a man behind the curtain as there always is with that scenario. All right, for sure. Uh what do you uh what's the tie today you're trying to cut that that you're struggling with?

SPEAKER_00: 20:53

Um I've been trying for five years and maybe too long to get on a paid board seat. Um and I was thinking I would be on a public board seat, but maybe the fiduciary risk there is too much. But private equity, I own a lot of companies, maybe board members, um eSops, employee-owned companies, and privately owned companies. So I'm working towards that. I've been working towards that for five years, and I take endless amounts of CP credits through Ernston Young and Deloitte and KPMG, and I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn posting and talking about things. And that's my wall that I've been climbing for some time. And I think I'm getting close, and I won't give up because that's my future. So as maybe Gilda gets bigger and I I maybe we sell it one day or not, or whatever, but I'd like to go sit on some boards. And with what I understand and my entrepreneurial journey and my diversity of thought and uh the way I think of things, I think I could be very helpful to companies with bigger budgets. I'm on five of these boards now, they pay just in shares, and one of them is a nonprofit where the gentleman spent 12 years in federal penitentiary for drug charges, and I do that for free, and I like working with them. And he's spoken to over 6,000 people, 10 and 20 at a time, at risk youth, right? Drugs and violence is not the answer. Uh so I give back that way. Um, I'm happy to do it. And my journey is uh a paid board seat.

SPEAKER_01: 22:23

Uh some some rapid fire, sir. So what was probably the uh best or worse business advice you've ever received?

SPEAKER_00: 22:30

The best business advice I've ever seen. Um or the worst. I'm not sure I can answer that rapid fire. Um let me think about it. What's the next question?

SPEAKER_01: 22:44

Uh well, maybe okay. So maybe a book. Give me a book you think everyone should read.

SPEAKER_00: 22:50

Um, one of the books that I think everyone should read if they're building a startup um is is uh I'm not gonna know the name of it, but we'll look over and tell you it's a venture deals by Feld. If you're raising capital, if you're building a company, you have to read that to understand that. The best business advice I ever got, I think is just show up every day. Like you've got to just show up every day at the right time, sober, ready to go, and and and and do the best thing. Um, but very clearly um treat your employees really well and listen to what they have to say and take care of them and do the right thing there. The worst business advice, um, I'd have to go back to one of the trades that I probably put on too much and took too much risk. Um there's just a lot of them. Um and that's part of the whole thinking of when you're trading and you know how much money you want to make and what you're trying to do.

SPEAKER_01: 23:45

Now, if you had to go back in your timeline, any point you wanted to go, when would you go back? What would you do differently?

SPEAKER_00: 23:51

I'd go back to 1980, 81, when I was on the floor of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, and I would have learned better what the math was behind trading. Because I was standing in the cloud, buying on the bid, selling in the offer of options, and the guy next to me wearing computer vision, and it was about 18% interest rates, and he was just doing reversals. So he's selling the stock, buying the call, and selling the put for even and making huge money, a million a year, standing next to me while I was making, you know, 5,000 a month, and I was just too young and chasing too much skirt to work on the math and understand what he was doing or what I should have been doing. And had I done that earlier, it would have changed the trajectory of my business and what I was doing. And I was just too immature to uh understand it.

SPEAKER_01: 24:42

Another example answer is on the exit, I put it all in Bitcoin. That would have been fine too. I would have gone that way.

SPEAKER_00: 24:47

I was looking at Bitcoin when it's two or three hundred, and I actually sort of danced around a little bit, and I saw it go up a lot and then come down. And my trading sense said to me, This is going higher. And I will tell you this my trading sense at a hundred and what is it now? 19,000 um says it's going higher. And mathematically it's gonna go to a million, like it's gonna run out in the movie. No, there's no there's no such thing as that math. That's all BS. It's gonna run out. They're gonna it's a it's a yeah, but it's it then it'll be just uh, you know, something that people own. But the um in our lifetimes it'll get to a million. I think there's a possibility, but if quantum computing comes through quicker and they could break the chain and then you can make all the bitcoin you want, it's going to zero. Um, and people don't understand that. I doubt that's ever happening, but people are recommending everyone have 1% in Bitcoin. They have ETFs now. So I think there's just an underlying bid for effort. So my guess is it's going higher. I'm not a buyer and I think it comes in hard, but from is it from a million or three hundred thousand or a hundred and eighteen thousand? I have no idea.

SPEAKER_01: 25:51

Well, you I I like the idea. No matter what you put your money in about 10 years later, you can take it out. You've done you've done great. At any point, didn't matter where you're in the cycle, just put it in 10 years later, you're good. The market has done the market has done very well. Yeah. Uh I think your last question is if there was a question I should have asked you, but I didn't, what would that question have been?

SPEAKER_00: 26:13

Um what's the most important thing in your life?

SPEAKER_01: 26:18

How would you answer it?

SPEAKER_00: 26:20

Gotta be my family. That's it. I give everything up, you know, everything up for the family. Um, and even at this age, maybe even my, you know, given a choice of, you know, them or me or something, like I've lived a decent life. Like I want them to move on and stuff. So uh I have a son and two daughters, they're all doing well, they're off our dime. They actually recently bought us dinner and a and and a spa, we a one-day spa thing. It's like kind of weird to have your children buying things for you when the money's all gone the other way. But uh no, family is what everything is important, family and friendship. And when you have friends and you text them or call them up and you haven't spoken to them in a year, a good friend just says, Hey, how are you? What's going on? And a friend that's not a good friend maybe says, you know, oh, you don't call me or anything. Like my friend just pick up the conversation like it was just yesterday.

SPEAKER_01: 27:12

Yeah, that's a good friend. Thank you for coming on, by the way. To tell everyone how, or well, who do you want to get a hold of you and how do you want them to do that?

SPEAKER_00: 27:19

Uh Michael J. Frank, I'm on LinkedIn. You could find me there um and you can message me there. That would be great. Or on Michael at Gilder.com uh for email. G-I-L-D-R-E.

SPEAKER_01: 27:31

Michael, thank you so much for coming on today. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00: 27:34

I appreciate it. Um a million subscribers, how do I say no, sir?

SPEAKER_01: 27:38

Right? Come on. If you say if you want to, Sam. Listen, everyone who made it to this point in the show, thank you so much. You know, I I want you to get out there, define your success, and you know, cut the ties of whatever it is holding you back. Again, listen, if it's your first time here, hope it's the first of many. And if you've been here before, thanks for coming back.