Do You Remember Bank Account Books?

Over the summer, I was on a call with a 27-year-old "growth strategist" (aka “marketing bro”) who set up an intro call with me. He said that he was looking for ways to grow his company. But what he did was try to turn it around and try to sell me on his services. (I don’t know who told him that was a good play…whatevs). He started to tell me how to build my agency consulting business. He had the unearned confidence of a 20-something guy fresh off of some kind of “mastermind” retreat with a “guru”… Armed with all the coolest marketing frameworks - funnels, webinars, automated DMs and stuff, he said:

“Your network is your net worth, Tim. You ought to be leveraging your network.”

Trying hard to hold back the desire to pull a Werther’s candy out of my cardigan pocket & call him a whippersnapper, I said "You mean...the 300+ agency owners I've worked with over the last 8 years? And the thousands of colleagues & clients that I’ve had since my 1st real job in 1991? Them?"

I guess the whippersnapper vibe came through, and he said, “Um…yeah, them.”

Here's what the kids can’t quite see yet:

The game isn't about who hustles hardest. It's about who's been compounding longest.

You've probably heard Warren Buffett is worth around umpteen billion dollars. What you probably haven't heard is that 99% of that wealth came after his 50th birthday.

At 50, Buffett was worth about $1 billion. Financial rock start to be sure. But the next 40+ years? Compound interest went absolutely nuclear.

The man didn't get smarter after 50. He didn't work harder. He ate McDonald’s, read a lot and just kept doing what he'd been doing for decades. Generally, Buffet lets time do the heavy lifting.

The lesson isn't "be patient." You've ALREADY been patient. You've been compounding skills, relationships, and hard-won wisdom for 30+ years. The question isn't whether it'll pay off. It's whether you'll finally cash in.

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Your 28-year-old competition has hustle. Energy. Optimism. What they don't have is time-in-market. Here's what's been quietly compounding in your life while you weren't paying attention:

You've seen:

That 28-year-old sees a charismatic founder with a hockey-stick projection. You see the same pitch you heard in 2001, 2008, and 2019 - right before things went sideways.

Pattern recognition isn't a skill you learn. It's a skill you accumulate through scar tissue. And you've got plenty.

The Compound Math: Every business disaster you've witnessed (or survived) is now a pattern you can spot in 30 seconds. That's worth more than any McKinsey framework.

Google your name. That's not just search results - that's 30 years of receipts.

When a 28-year-old says "trust me," it's a request. When you say it, it's backed by decades of evidence. Former clients. Colleagues who vouch for you. A track record that speaks louder than any pitch deck.

You're not asking for trust. You're collecting on trust you've already built.

The Compound Math: A single strong reference from someone you worked with in 2005 is worth more than 100 LinkedIn testimonials from people you met last quarter.

Remember when you fell for that too-good-to-be-true deal in your 30s? The partner who turned out to be a nightmare? The "sure thing" that wasn't?

Those expensive lessons didn't disappear. They changed your business DNA.

Now you can smell a bad deal before the first meeting ends. You can read a room in 60 seconds. You know which "opportunities" are actually traps dressed up in business casual.

That kid with the growth hacks? He's going to learn these lessons the hard way. You already paid that tuition.

The Compound Math: Every $50k mistake you made in your 30s and 40s is now a $50k mistake you won't make in your 50s and 60s. That's not a loss - it's an asset.

The WSJ just reported the highest price ever paid for modern art at auction.

While equities, gold, bitcoin hover near highs, the art market is showing signs of early recovery after one of the longest downturns since the 1990s.

Here’s where it gets interesting→

Each investing environment is unique, but after the dot com crash, contemporary and post-war art grew ~24% a year for a decade, and after 2008, it grew ~11% annually for 12 years.*

Overall, the segment has outpaced the S&P by 15 percent with near-zero correlation from 1995 to 2025.

Now, Masterworks lets you invest in shares of artworks featuring legends like Banksy, Basquiat, and Picasso. Since 2019, investors have deployed $1.25 billion across 500+ artworks.

Masterworks has sold 25 works with net annualized returns like 14.6%, 17.6%, and 17.8%.

Shares can sell quickly, but my subscribers skip the waitlist:

Skip waitlist

_{*Per Masterworks data. Investing involves risk. Past performance not indicative of future returns. Important Reg A disclosures: masterworks.com/cd}

Grab a notebook (or your notes app, we are old, not Luddites). Answer these:

Now look at that list. That's not "being old." That's your arsenal.

Your 20-something competition is still making deposits. You've been compounding for three decades.

They're playing for their first million. You're playing with house money.

The only question is: are you going to keep that wealth locked up in a 401k of unused experience? Or are you finally going to start spending it?

Tick tock. The compounding clock never stops.