Connect with Joel Block:
Website: JoelBlock.com
Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm here today with Joel Block. Joel is a futurist, long-time venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager, which is gobbledygook for a professional investor who lives in a shark tank like on TV. Initially, an expert blackjack player, counting cards, and beating casinos in Las Vegas, Joel later built and sold his publishing company to a Fortune 500 company. Joel, welcome to the show.
Joel Block: Lisa, thanks for having me. How are you?
Lisa Ryan: Good, good, thanks. I know that this is a manufacturing podcast, and we're going to be getting there. There are all kinds of disruptive business trends going on in manufacturing. Before we get started, you are a professional investor, which means you look forward in time. How do you decide exactly what to do regarding these trends that you're talking about?
Joel Block: I started in the gambling business, and I take risks for a living. I look at things. Investors give me their capital. I'm not a broker. Investors literally give me their money, and then we buy something together, and then we share the profits. That's how Wall Street works. It's how my business functions, and that's been in that business for 30 years. I've bought and sold companies. I've built and sold my own company from scratch to a big company, and I've done with many other companies entrepreneurial-type people have tried to do.
I look at companies from many different perspectives, and I think about the impact of other things happening in the world. Then I think about who will win, who will lose, and that's how I do it.
One of the things that we'll talk about, I hope, is disruptive business trends because these are things that could knock you out of your lane or cause you some problems. I like to think about that. I want to think about what could go right, what could go wrong, and the impact of different kinds of external and internal things. There's a lot here, and you will unpack a lot of stuff.
Lisa Ryan: So, how did you get started in all this? What was your journey as far as where you started and how you ended up here?
Joel Block: I learned how to play blackjack as a young. I was 20-21 years old. I was in casinos. I was playing, and actually, I knew I was good at it. But I also knew if I kept playing, I wouldn't have gone to college, and it would have been bad for me in the long run. So I ended up getting an accounting degree and became a CPA. I worked at Price Waterhouse, but I was a little rebellious. I wasn't an excellent account. If I didn't quit, I'd been fired for sure.
What made me not be a good accountant made me great in business. I asked a lot of questions. I always wondered, and they didn't want me to wonder things. They wanted me to be a good soldier and do the work. I wasn't a good soldier, but I was a great general. That wasn't what they needed from me, so I get that, and it wasn't the right environment. So I started a real estate syndication company where I learned how to raise capital.
I learned how this stuff works and then started a venture capital transaction I built and sold. I've just stayed in that business ever since. I love doing deals and buying and selling things. I spent a lot of time helping executives of different kinds of companies to see the world. It may be another way because I bring a different perspective to them. I helped them to learn from all the things that I've learned. You go inside of 1000 companies in your career – buying, selling, looking at their books and records and be involved with those companies, and you learn a few things. I've been around the block and share a lot of Intel with my clients or companies we work with.
Lisa...
