Stanley Druckenmiller on What Makes a Great Investor, Bitcoin & His Biggest Trades

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
All right, everyone, we have a quick ad for HubSpot. But I want to let you know, I actually use HubSpot and I use their sales tool, which is what this ad is for. HubSpot sales platform, it makes it just easier to sell stuff, to do it faster, to look at your pipeline, to see what sales are going to happen. Just prospect to cold outreach and get more customers faster and easier. Plus, it's easy to learn and free to start. So you guys can check it out, hubspot.com/sales.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:27)
This episode is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network.
But what is the HubSpot Podcast Network? That's right. It's a new thing by HubSpot. They started with our podcast, and now they're branching into more and more podcasts with experts in different business areas. So you might have a podcast about marketing, or sales, or operations, or customer service. And we're going to go over through the different podcasts on this network. Some are more entertaining, some are more informational, some are a good mix of both. That's what we try to do here.
And HubSpot's goal here is to have on-demand mentors. So if you're an entrepreneur, you're a startup, you're scaling up, you're going to be able to hear practical tips and inspirational stories by listening to the different podcasts on their network. Which by the way, I think this is a smart idea. Too many brands just try to sell you their thing. HubSpot, I love their approach here. They're like, let's put out great, valuable, free content and help more companies succeed. And the more companies that we help succeed, the more we'll eventually come back to us, sort of like a good karma kind of thing.
So, listen, learn and grow with HubSpot Podcast Network, hubspot.com/podcastnetwork.

**Sam Parr** (1:43)
So today, Trung, who writes our daily email and is going viral on Twitter right now, is here with a special episode. Trung, what are people about to listen to?

**Trung Phan** (1:54)
So I had the chance to interview Stanley Druckenmiller. He's widely considered one of the greatest investors ever. Just top-level notes, one of the richest people in America with 5.6 bill. He famously broke the Bank of England while working at George Soros' quantum fund. He made a billion dollars on a trade shorting the British pound.
He has an incredible investing track record. Over 40 years, he's never had a down year.
2008, he was up 11 percent, which a lot of people actually point to as the impressive thing. So even when the entire market is tanking, he's been able to be up. The other thing that he's really known for in terms of his track record is, 30 years of 30 percent returns or more. So 30 for 30 I don't know who else has that record. I know if you look at Buffett annualized over his entire career, it's like 20 percent a year, but 30 percent for 30 years straight is outrageous.

**Sam Parr** (2:47)
So that's amazing. I would like that.
But our audience is typically guys and folks building companies, not necessarily investing. But we wanted to air this anyway because, A, you're blowing up and people want to hear from you. And if this works, maybe you're going to want to do your own podcast. But also, how does this apply to our listeners and what should they look out for?

**Trung Phan** (3:12)
Absolutely. So the first thing I want to mention, Ashley, that I forgot to say was this entire meeting was set up by Toggle AI. You can find them at Toggle.global.
And the reason why they set it up is because Stan is actually an investor in their company. So he's invested in startups and they're a fintech company. So they're able to set up the meeting. But if you were to answer your questions around the lessons of what people can apply, I'd say there are kind of three takeaways from just his mindset as an investor that I think matter in a business building world is he said what makes a great investor is having small bets in concentrated positions, but with super high conviction. And the example he brings up in the interview that you will hear coming up is he mentions Buffett and Carl Icahn. And he says, if you actually look at them, they're not doing the whole NBA playbook of diversifying. They're identifying crazy, good opportunities and going all in on them.
And he brings up his personal examples when he broke the pound or broke the Bank of England is he went into George Soros' office and said, hey, we put 100% of the fund into this short trade. And then the lesson that he drew from it is Soros goes to him and says, if you're so confident in this trade, why aren't we doing even more? Why isn't there 150% of the fund in it or 200% when using leverage? Which is exactly what they ended up doing.