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Adam Gill is a founder and Managing Director at GLS Capital and a leader in litigation finance. I talked to Adam to learn how he obtained his financial independence and used that to pursue the opportunities that led him where he is today. We discussed the strategies to create opportunities and serendipity. And we dive into the investments he's made, and how he recommends others invest their time and effort and capital.
Adam’s experience in litigation finance began in 2013 when he joined Gerchen Keller Capital, LLC (“GKC”) as its first employee and led its patent investment team as the firm grew from $100 million AUM into the world’s largest private fund focused on legal and regulatory risk in 2016, with $1.4 billion AUM. After GKC was acquired by Burford in December 2016, Adam served as a Principal at Burford.
Prior to joining GKC, Adam was a partner in the patent litigation group of Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Chicago. Before joining K&E in 2004, Adam was a litigator in the Silicon Valley office of Dechert LLP, where he practiced patent, trade secret, securities and antitrust litigation. Adam holds a J.D. from the University of California-Hastings College of the Law and a B.A. from the University of South Carolina.
Deep conversations with underrated lawyers.
So thanks, everyone, for joining us and listening. I'm Khurram Naik. I'm a lawyer with a somewhat unusual path. I began working as a lawyer when I was 31. And before that, I never made more than $40,000 in a year just living all over the country and working a bunch of different jobs.
Khurram Naik:I grew up pretty modestly and paid most of my way through college. And I had a full scholarship for law school, so I had a mixture of challenges and privilege. So after law school, I joined Big Law and I took my finances very seriously. So now I have the freedom to pursue my interests, which includes having conversations like this. And I'm here because I wrote a post on LinkedIn about this journey and talked directly about the value in taking control of your finances and what the opportunities that gives you, which is I think something that's just not discussed enough and specifically in law.
Khurram Naik:And the post really resonated with a lot of people. It got 2,500 plus reactions, 2,200 plus views, which is a lot for me. I made me realize I had something to share about finances that I could help others learn from as well. That's why I want to talk to Adam Gill. I've known Adam for a while since his time at Gershon Keller, which was then the world's largest private fund focused on legal and regulatory risk.
Khurram Naik:And then he joined Burford from there and now he's founder and managing director of GLS Capital, which is one of the world's largest private investment firms focused on legal and regulatory risk. And before his time in litigation finance, Adam was a partner of Kirkland Ellis, which is, you know, for those that don't know, of the biggest firms in the world and he practiced patent litigation there. Adam and I have known each other since his time at Gershun Keller. Sure.
Adam Gill:So that was actually before before Kirkland. That was that was when I was at, Deckard. So I started off my career as a young lawyer in, in the Palo Alto office of a of a of a and our office eventually became, Deckard. They acquired us. And there was a, an older attorney, and he was, right around the time I was leaving, he, which wasn't which was a year or two into my career, he he was leaving as well.
Adam Gill:I was going to Chicago and he was retiring. He was kind of a legend in the office and in the valley, I'm told. I went up to him and I asked him, What advice would you have for a young lawyer? What would you tell yourself if you were me? And he said, master your craft.
Adam Gill:And I said, well, that's great. But, you know, how do I do that? What what's the best advice for that? Then he said, make sure that you understand what you're doing and why you're doing it at all times. If you don't understand, ask.
Adam Gill:I thought that was really helpful because it allows you it allowed me over the course of my career to understand the perspective, larger perspective, and understand what we were trying to accomplish so that when I would have ideas that might help us achieve that, that were not part of the task I was given, or when things came up that I was doing that seemed to be not furthering that or even adverse to that, I could raise my hand and ask somebody, Hey, should we be doing it a different way or have an idea or something like that? And that's, I think, a way to really add value. I was talking about this with a partner later in my career at Kirkland. I was still an associate at this time. The partner told me, Yeah, if you just sit in your office and you do what I ask you, you're pretty much worthless to me because I need people with judgment.
Adam Gill:I need people that can operate independently, that's what it takes. I think overall, it was good advice.
Khurram Naik:It's so interesting what you're doing and why. And I guess that kind of leads me to ask you about why you pursued Big Law. There's lots of reasons why someone might enter Big Law for the money, the status, the type of work you're doing, the career options. How did you think about it at the time, but why you enter big law? So on the subject of what you're doing and why.
Adam Gill:Sure. So I grew up in Washington DC or a suburb right outside Washington DC. And so that's a town filled with lawyers and politics. And I saw politics as not not quite as skills based and, the law more, you know, based in the ability to actually do difficult things, based on, you know, things that you learn rather than backslapping and that sort of thing. Not to denigrate politics, I just felt like it was a more predictable path for someone who wanted to work on intellectual merit.
Adam Gill:I always thought being a lawyer was a good opportunity for a profession. There were no manufacturing jobs around where I grew up. There was not a whole lot of industry. The defense industry and the technical corridor that's now there didn't exist at the time, so it was natural for me to go into law. Once I did that, going into big law, the money is certainly helpful.
Adam Gill:I had law school loans and wanted to pay them off. I had a young family. You want to get started and get on your way towards financial independence. Some of the prestige, but not so much based in ego, but based in the ability to open doors for the next move, the ability to go somewhere else where you want to go, freedom, I guess, a professional sense rather than in a financial sense. I perceived that as being the benefits that big law provided for me.
Khurram Naik:When you were down that path, was there an moment? Was there some moment that was really an inflection point in your thinking saying, Hey, I've got to do something different here. I've got to go my own way on this and figure out how to take control of my finances. Was there a moment like that for yourself?
Adam Gill:There wasn't one specific moment. It was a process. And it was really two things. One was as I as I approach partnership by at Kirkland Ellis, there certainly is a gate every year. If you if you have bad reviews, they will, you know, basically tell you and show you the door in any year of your career.
Adam Gill:It's not just when you're up for partner. And that that's I think that's, you know, ultimately a good thing because if you're not doing well in year two, they'll tell you and give you time to fix it. If you're not doing well where you should be in year four or five, six, the same thing. And so for the firm, that results in a in a in a highly skilled kind of uniformly workforce, and I've heard that from some people who have left. And so I think that's good.
Adam Gill:And, look, if you're not gonna make it somewhere, I think it's good to know early on and and have the ability to to make changes or start thinking about other things. And so I was always comfortable and and doing well, but it changes when you're up for share partnership because as we all know, the pyramid has to get more narrow. A lot of times, that's where it happens. So being realistic, just in terms of my odds and in terms of what it takes, thought about, is that the life I want to have? Certainly, and after the Great Recession as well, the calculus changed.
Adam Gill:It used to be, at least in our practice area in my firm, Kirkland, the pie was expanding. There was room for everybody because, you know, patent litigation was growing tremendously. The firm was growing. The group was growing. And, you know, you got pay paid extraordinarily well along the way.
Adam Gill:You know, when the Great Recession hit, bonuses got slashed. You know, my first my bonus in my first year as a partner was, I think, one third of the bonus the year before I made partner as an associate. And my review was the same, and the hours were the same. So the money that you were making changed. The work stayed the same or even increased.
Adam Gill:The pressure increased because I felt it went from kind of a how are you doing inquiry each year to a justify your existence inquiry each year as firms were shedding tons of lawyers. And so when I looked at that existence on my way to share partnership, it wasn't really very attractive for me. So professionally, I had some concerns about stability in my life. In IP, you know, especially as a patent litigator, I don't have a technical degree. Over you know, at at the point I left Kirkland Ellis, I had been there for ten years.
Adam Gill:And over that period, I had been digging in to the technical aspects of cases and working with, you know, world class experts. And I felt you know, I'm very technically competent. I can get into semiconductors and software and all that kind of stuff. So from a skills perspective, I feel very comfortable. However, if you're looking to go in house or anywhere really in your career, making that move in the world of patent litigation or in patents, there's always that prerequisite that people want to see a scientific degree.
Adam Gill:I knew that that would always be an issue. I was thinking to myself, maybe I should move for increased stability in the future. How do I do that based on the fact that in the area I'm at, from some of the gating issues, I'll be in a disfavored bucket even though I had, I thought, exceptional experience and certainly the skill to do jobs that I would be looking for. That was swirling around professionally. Then in terms of just what I wanted to do, that played a big part too.
Adam Gill:I remember some of the most rewarding parts of my time at Kirkland were when friends of mine who had businesses that an IP issue would come to me and wanna talk about them and, you know, potentially bring a case through Kirkland. And I would sit with them, and and usually I knew that, you know, that we were not the right match for them. Either too expensive for a small company or the firm probably would not be interested in taking on a matter that might conflict them out of larger matters later. For whatever reason, it just wasn't a match. But I'd sit with them anyway because they're my friends and do the intake.
Adam Gill:I provide them, you know, with, you know, my thinking at the end of that on, you know, things that they might do and where they were, what what kind of, help they needed. And and they were truly grateful. And a lot of times that advice most of the time that advice worked out very well for them. And a couple of them came back later and said, you know, how how well it it worked out for them and how much they appreciated the my advice. And that was really gratifying to me.
Adam Gill:You know, in being a lawyer in in these huge cases that we would do, it's task focused and not goal focused a lot of the time. You're focused on this part of the case or this part of discovery, and it doesn't feel terribly productive a lot of the time. That weighed on me. I really enjoyed doing counseling that was meaningful and helping people solve important issues to them. When I decided it was time to make a move, I wanted to make a move towards a path that would allow me to do more of that, which ultimately I concluded meant going in house.
Adam Gill:Business has a problem, the business people go to the legal people. Maybe it's the legal people in their specific business or department or maybe it's the corporate legal people depending on how the company is structured. Those legal people go up the chain maybe to the general counsel who goes to a senior partner at a firm who puts the work down to more junior partners who put the work down to associates. At each transfer of information, you have something lost because you just tell the people what they need to know. You don't give them the full picture necessarily.
Adam Gill:By the time it gets to a junior partner or an associate, you're losing context and you're not being asked to help them really solve problems. You're asked to be a part in in providing a service and doing a specific task. And so I wanted to get closer to solving problems, closer to solving problems of a business to feel like I was, you know, frankly, being more productive. So, ultimately, I made the decision that I did wanna leave the firm and that my next move should be in house in a role that allowed me access to helping solve the issues of the business, certainly legal ones, but even better if there were practical business issues that I could contribute to solving.
Khurram Naik:As far as, let's say, risk goes or financial consequences, like how did you manage to minimize the risk of a transition? Because I think that would be probably a big financial change. My understanding is going in house conventionally, you're getting paid a lot less. So put you in a position where you are comfortable with proceeding?
Adam Gill:Saving money. The short answer is I'm sorry?
Khurram Naik:That's the good stuff. Want to talk about that. So I have I mean, what was, When you first started out at Deckard and then to Kirkland, were you maxing your four zero one? What do you mean when you say you were saving money?
Adam Gill:I can't remember when I started. I don't think I did max out my four zero one ks initially. Before law school, I was a legal assistant and I did put money away in a four zero one ks there and I put some money away in a four zero one ks. In my early years. I've always been the sole breadwinner of our family.
Adam Gill:Living in San Francisco, even though the salaries of young lawyers were talked about a lot and were fairly high, Still not a lot to put away after a San Francisco mortgage a family of four. It was later on in my career that I was able to really max out everything. I wish I had done it earlier. I think it that is one thing that I would say, and I have said to my kids, and to young professionals is max it out as early as you possibly can and just learn to live within, you know, your means and and set up your life so that you just never, you know, miss that money because it just goes automatically into your four zero one k. I think that there's such a big there's such a huge effect of starting to save early in your career, letting that compound over time, putting it away year after year after year.
Adam Gill:That's, I think, critical in terms of long term stability, unless you're counting on an enormous payday somewhere down the road. When
Khurram Naik:did you really feel like you had a basic understanding of personal finance investing and a basic understanding of, hey, here's the value of compounding? Was there a time frame in your career or was there a moment that you felt like, Hey, I get this now. I get what this means.
Adam Gill:Yeah. Learned, I guess, financial responsibility, I'll call it, from my mom. I was raised by a single mom. She's a professional. I have four brothers and sisters from the youngest of five.
Adam Gill:I would see her balancing her checkbook every month, and I would see her living within her means. You know, the the the mentality was work hard and save your money. And the mentality also was, you know, if you if you don't have the money, then, maybe we can't afford it and we should wait as opposed to, you know, buy it on credit and pay it off later. So I think that was the the kind of the foundation of, you know, my my financial, thinking, my financial understanding, financial responsibility.
Khurram Naik:How did you get the financial expertise and judgment that you have now? I mean, what were your how did you learn that? I mean, that something that you set up, you just learn on your own? Were there mentors you had? I mean, what did it take for you to get financial judgment?
Adam Gill:My mom, my early years, she was a professional. She's a nurse, I have four brothers and sisters, so I'm the youngest of five. I would see her balancing her checkbook, I would hear things like work hard and save your money on a regular basis. The way that she ran the family's finances was from a perspective of we do what we can and from a perspective of living within your means as opposed to living on credit spending now and paying for it later. She always instilled in us, I think, those values which have served me well.
Adam Gill:I've always lived absent student loan, car, and house payment relatively debt free, which I think is important. That discipline is important. That's kind of where I think I got the basis of my thinking about financial responsibility. Going into investing later in life and thinking about that, I've always been interested in finance. That's what drew me away from business that are involved in finance.
Adam Gill:When I was at Clinton Ellis, I would trade Chinese micro apps in my personal account just all amounts because it was fun. Chinese micro apps because our conflict at Cornellis is particularly challenging. Seems like we're we're either, you know, representing or adverse to everybody. Things like Chinese micro caps were a place where I could could actually do some trading without too much worry about that, and it was fun. I learned I got an account at a place called TradeStation.
Adam Gill:They have a very sophisticated platform with really robust data available and software. They have a whole programming language for programming models and strategies. You can even automate them if you want. You can do extensive back testing and optimization. And so I got really into that just kind of out of, as a hobby and enjoyed it.
Adam Gill:Taught myself the their programming language and would make models and would make, strategies. And And so I just kind of was drawn to that and did that for a number of years. What I learned from that is I was very good at making models that perform well in a directional market, very good at making models that perform well in a flat market, but neither of those things are particularly revolutionary or impressive. Anybody can really do that. The trick is knowing which market you're in.
Adam Gill:Right? And and that's the rub, knowing what's gonna happen in the future. And I think it's really difficult to do that from a kind of a technical analysis basis. And so I fell into more fundamental analysis. And just for the viewers who don't understand those terms, perhaps, technical analysis is more predicting the market movements in the future based on charting and chart patterns, whereas fundamental analysis is more looking at a particular company based on or or even industry based on the fundamental financials, so going through their financial statements, thinking about what their particular revenue, expenses, market opportunity is going to be in the future.
Adam Gill:That's what I got drawn to a little bit more as I went along, even though I do think the trading aspect is exciting and a lot of
Khurram Naik:What did you discover about yourself? It's interesting that you realize, okay, there's this epistemological issue of understanding what market you're in. What did you discover or what point did you discover? Because there's something different about you, right? I mean, you've gone down a path that few lawyers have gone down.
Khurram Naik:And so what was the point which you realized there was something different about yourself that you had set yourself down off down on a path that few others were going to follow. If there's something different about your outlook and your judgment, I guess the way that I put it for myself is I discovered over time that being a passive buy and hold investor seemed like the most obvious thing. It just seems like the simplest and most obvious thing. You just buy every month and you buy what you can. You don't overextend yourself, but you buy as much as you can.
Khurram Naik:And over time I discovered, okay, there's any number of perfectly intelligent people, high income people who don't have that discipline and patience. And so that was something that I realized, okay, that's a competitive advantage and that means something. That's something I can use in other domains. It's something I can apply to other areas of my practice. Say, okay, what are ways in which I can start rolling a ball?
Khurram Naik:It'll just like roll the snowball down a hill and it'll just grow and grow. So that understanding of myself affected myself professionally. What about yourself? What is it about these experiences that you experiences like training these micro caps or working litigation plans and really taught yourself, hey, there's something different about me and here's what I can do with it.
Adam Gill:That's a good question. I think I'd say the reason I'm doing what I'm doing now is because I moved in a direction of of things that I like to do professionally and took action on them. And then when opportunities arose, I, you know, I was there to take advantage of them. So what do I mean by that? So when I was just when I decided to leave Kirkland and Ellis, I, you know, I had to do a lot of soul searching.
Adam Gill:I guess I didn't have to, but I did because I wanted it to be a successful move. I think that's part of the hardest thing of people when they're thinking about, do I stay at this firm or do I go to another firm or do I stay at any firm or go in house or what do I do next? For me, it's a difficult thing. It's a lot of uncertainty, and it's not fun for me to do that kind of soul searching to say, what do I want to do? What are my skills?
Adam Gill:What am I good at? What do I have to offer? And so I did that at Kirkland. Part of what we talked about before was part of that. And then part of it was what do I want to do with myself?
Adam Gill:And so I set out a couple of things, and one of them was things in the financial industry. I thought that was really interesting subject matter. And so I told a couple of partners that I trusted that I was interested to leave the firm and, you know, had a conversation about that with them about what I was looking to do. And, you know, maybe nine months or a year later, one of them came to me and said, hey. I just talked to somebody who's starting up this company, a guy in the legal industry, and it seems pretty interesting.
Adam Gill:I thought you might be interested in what they're doing. He put me in touch with a group called IPXI. It was started by Ocean Tomo and Jim Malikowski there. And it was a group that was creating or trying to create a patent licensing business using a financial markets model. So commoditizing licenses and having them on an exchange that can be bought and and sold as basically commodity instruments.
Adam Gill:I thought that was really interesting, so I went and spoke with them. They had just gotten kind of their, you know, startup funding, and they had an impressive list of members that were that were that were their founding members. And I thought it'd be really exciting to to join and help them think through a lot of the issues that still remained unsolved, and they seemed very welcoming of that. So I ended up joining them. And then while I was there, you know, my conflicts from Kirkland fell away for my personal trading.
Adam Gill:And so I quickly gravitated towards trading stocks and options of companies that were involved in patent litigation because of my expertise in that. I felt like I had an edge over the market. And from that, I started and this is just in my personal account, so small amounts. And from that, I started writing on the subject as well, posting articles. One of those companies that I wrote about, I was put in touch with through a series of totally random events.
Adam Gill:And they happened to have a board member, whose name was Ashley Keller, who was in Chicago. And they said, you should really meet him. And I did. And it turned out he was doing the same thing for a hedge fund that I was doing in my personal account, which was, you know, basically making investments based on calling the outcome of litigation. He was focused more broadly on litigation generally, including patent litigation.
Adam Gill:So we became, we became friends and got to, comparing notes every couple of weeks. He's the Keller in Gurchen Keller. When he and Adam Gurchen started Gurchen Keller, he asked me if I would be willing to do some consulting for them if they were seeing patent matters. I said, Of course. Then a few months into that, they were seeing so much in the way of patents that they asked me to come and join them, which I jumped at.
Adam Gill:Part of it was luck, being in the right place at the right time, but that only came from my pursuing and doing things that I was interested in not from a perspective of a job. It was from a perspective I just want to do it. In fact, I remember sitting and writing my first article that I published and sitting on my couch at 11:00 at night thinking to myself, could watch some TV, or I could write this article, or I could go to bed. Why am I doing this? And I answered myself because it's fun.
Adam Gill:And so I wrote the article and the rest, as they say, is history. And I give that advice to young lawyers or to people now who are thinking about leaving firms. You may know, when you leave a firm, a lot of people who are still there reach out to talk to you about leaving and what it was like or perhaps for help. I hear a lot of people tell me, oh, yeah. I'm interested in finance too.
Adam Gill:And I'll ask them, well, what do you do? What does that mean? And sometimes it just means that they like money, which everybody does. But if they're truly interested in finance or startups or whatever, there are ways without going to get clients in the space that you can go and participate, especially as an attorney. You're a highly skilled professional.
Adam Gill:And there are certainly people that can use your help. And so if it's business, or if it's finance, if it's whatever, go find that community, go be a part of that community and contribute to it, whether it's providing pro bono services or doing things in your spare time, like writing articles, not necessarily law articles, but maybe you write articles in a trade publication that have a legal angle. But people appreciate that. It puts you in the flow with respect to something you're interested in. So that's without doing that intentionally to get the job I have now.
Adam Gill:That's what I did. I just went in the direction of what I like to do. And that puts you in the flow to be there when opportunities arise. Otherwise, you won't be there when there are opportunities and those opportunities are not going to seek you out.
Khurram Naik:Yeah, I love that because that gets at this whole chicken and egg thing of, well, you're talking about earlier about this whole concept of creating value. So even as you can see someone and say, okay, wow, they're an associate or a partner in Kirkland, that's so impressive. But then when you trace out that whole arc of, well, the genesis of the issues that they're working on, you can see how attenuated it is and how much more task oriented it is. And so the conundrum that you recognize was okay, well then how do I create more value? And there's a sort of chicken or egg thing and put yourself in a position to get in a position where you can create more value.
Khurram Naik:And so that's, I think that's where financial independence comes in mind is, like building yourself a foundation where you have some means you have some control, and then you can take these kind of, these,
Adam Gill:I
Khurram Naik:don't even think risk is the right word to use because what's a risk in writing an article. Like you're saying, it's just something you can do 11:00 at night instead of watching a movie. But you put yourself in a position where you're kind of like buying these call options, you will, just on potential opportunities. And I love that you're saying that yes, that's something you can do now. Think it's analogous to financial independence or things you can do now, can max out your four zero one and that's important.
Khurram Naik:But I think in parallel, think it's really interesting to talk about what are the other forms of value you're creating for yourself and ways to move in a step forward in that direction that you want to go in.
Adam Gill:Yeah. And it doesn't even need to be coming in and writing articles somewhere like that. It can be something as simple as joining an industry association and just being a part of the community. Right? If you like if you like construction or, you know, startups or whatever, you know, participate in in in industry meetings even as a just an attendee.
Adam Gill:And you'll see what the industry is talking about, and you'll see the issues that they're facing. And then you can get involved in those. And, you know, especially as lawyers, you know, it it'd be one thing if if this was a a podcast or a recording for high school graduates or students because you're in a much more limited ability to help people. But as lawyers, have great ability to help people, think through legal issues, address legal issues, or even just apply that critical reasoning in a in a perhaps non legal way. There's definitely opportunity.
Adam Gill:And it's just important to go do something about it and recognize that it's not just about, going and getting a client for the firm. That's not all that professional development is, especially personal professional development. It's about thinking, one, doing the step of thinking where do you want to go and then taking steps in that direction presently and getting yourself the when things do yourself in the spot where opportunities are, and then so that you're there when they appear and can take advantage of them. It's very important.
Khurram Naik:Yeah. It's really interesting to see how that is like that sort of long term thinking that underlies financial judgment, financial independence, as well as career control. And to me, seems like the two go hand in hand. Mean, I think that's you want financial independence so that you can put yourself in position where you can have interesting conversations with people you want to work in things that you want. And you do that in some pieces.
Khurram Naik:It's not some huge move. So we talked about, I think of the people listening to this, I think some people are maybe very early in their path towards financial independence. And I think we talked about some of the basic things that they can do there to understand. It's important to hear from someone like yourself. Think they can hear from any number of places, okay, yes, you should save and invest.
Khurram Naik:But I think to hear from someone who's actually done this, I think is really important. I think that's the purpose of this conversation is to make this more tangible for people. But I found, so even before I entered law school, worked in finance briefly. Was kind of a weird sense that it's a conversation from another time as a futures broker. But in that time, I learned a lot about finance and taught myself a lot and I didn't have any money to speak of, of course, as we noted, but I learned about what people who had money did.
Khurram Naik:And so that was really helpful for me and thinking ahead and say, hey, when I have money, here's the things I'm going to be doing and here's how I'm going think about that. So I think it might also be helpful for someone who has the financial success that you do. Maybe you can tell a little more about, maybe we can get a glimpse into your world and so just so people understand what they can aspire to and how they should be thinking about it. So I myself, I've taken the position that finances are one thing you can't ever really outsource. Don't see a way where it's like your health, you can't outsource your health and to me your financial health is the same.
Khurram Naik:And so do you use advisor? Do you control your asset allocation? Can you speak a little about that? So people who are maybe in a position where they've progressed a little bit down the field and they have some assets and they're trying to get a better sense of understanding what to do with it. Can you speak to those things?
Adam Gill:Sure. So yeah, most of my, well actually pretty much all of my investments are self directed at this point. I was disappointed. It was an eye opener for me, the recession that happened in 2008, 2009. I looked around and I saw how many financial advisors advise people to to pull back exposure or to move out of certain stocks, financial stocks or or whatever during that time period.
Adam Gill:And if if professionals can't see something that big and that structural coming, then really what's the value there in those people? I'm not saying that nobody did a good job, but the people that I think let's call them ordinary investors have access to. I'm sure I'm sure family offices and hedge funds probably did maybe on balance better than, you know, the average Joe, but I don't have access to those people managing my portfolio. So I thought, well, if there aren't people who can do that, then it was for something that big, then how can they get these little things right? For my asset allocation and what I invest in, I take a pretty conservative approach, which is a lot of index funds.
Adam Gill:I still reserve a little bit of my portfolio just to do what I want with, maybe swing trading, meaning take advantages of, you know, medium term trends, industries that I think might be coming up in the future or businesses that I think are particularly good. You know, Google is one that I put in my portfolio a long time ago just because I thought, hey, these guys are basically a fire hydrant of cash, and they've been growing consistently. So I thought that was a good investment. That said, something I didn't invest in for that same reason a long time ago, which I probably should have, was Amazon. Quite frankly, I haven't understood Amazon's rise as it has been because from a investor standpoint, if a unit of stock is the amount that that company is going to give you back over a period of time, Google has way outperformed because they have been hugely profitable and provided tons of dividends where Amazon is not.
Adam Gill:Or not nearly as much. But Amazon obviously is worth way more and has taken that ballistic ride. As a factual matter, that was the better bet. But I take a little bit more conservative positions. The ones so I'll take some bets like that on big name, well known companies.
Adam Gill:And I like Warren Buffett a lot. I like his thinking on investing. Reading Warren Buffett was, I remember, you know, very helpful for me because he takes a very simple view of of investing. The value school of investing doesn't require a ton of hypertechnical analysis. It requires a a ton of diligence and self control.
Adam Gill:I really like that. I like the Berkshire Hathaway stock and their model. But other than a couple little things like that, which are relatively safe bets as well that are pretty correlated to the market anyway. You know, a lot of index funds, and and I and I, you know, like to leave them there long term. I don't try to call the tops and the bottoms, because, statistically, they've shown over time.
Adam Gill:It's extraordinarily difficult to do, and I don't have anywhere near the amount of time necessary to even try to do that kind of stuff. So I think for me, it's just recognizing that how how difficult it is to do that kind of thing to pick individual stock winners certainly over the short term and to to to just give a broad based long term view and and and and let it be there long term. I think, you know, large cap US, large cap international markets are are fine places to do that. I'm a little overweight stocks just because of my age. You know, I've got the ability to, you know, to wait for a rebound stocks, outperform bonds in the long term.
Adam Gill:And so, you know, even if the stock market goes down significantly, I don't need to access that money for for several decades. So or let's not call it several anymore, maybe a couple. So so so with with the time horizon that I have, I'm a little bit over probably overexposed to equities, you know, relatively relative to what, you know, people advise. But that's kind of my overall strategy. Also, for, like, the for, like, having, you know, weird or esoteric stuff in my portfolio, I think I'm generally overexposed to that in my life because of my career.
Adam Gill:My job is and my previous job, which I had, was investing in litigation outcomes. So that's uncorrelated to the market. It's highly variable alternative investment. So just having the interests in my current fund and held over from my previous work, I've got a lot of exposure to alternative investments. I don't feel the need to put much, if any more of that in my investment portfolio.
Khurram Naik:And that's very interesting and very helpful for people to understand what they can expect for themselves and very helpful to hear how you're thinking about correlation and yeah, like the income you're getting from your work is already there's risks associated with that. That's already exposure to a certain kind of risk. It's going to de risk by doing things that are past as well. Well, I'm mindful of our time horizon here and I wanted to give you an opportunity for parting thoughts. The one question I ask is, what is it that you want people to learn from your path and what mistakes can they avoid because of things you've learned specifically focusing on financial independence?
Adam Gill:I'd say that is to start saving and save early, to understand what your goals are and to be realistic and always be learning aggressively in achieving those goals.