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What happens when you give your child $50 not to spend but to invest? In this episode, Sharran shares the inspiring story of how he turned his 11-year-old son into an investor and grew a $1,000 portfolio into over $7,000 in just three years.
Sharran breaks down the exact four investments they made, why one of them exploded 2,200%, and the powerful lessons he learned about risk, patience, and teaching kids the value of money early. He also explains why the best financial education isn’t about complexity but about clarity, confidence, and conversation.
This episode is more than a financial story–it’s a blueprint for building generational wealth and raising financially intelligent kids.
Tune in to discover how to help your child think like an investor before they even hit high school.
“The sooner you can introduce your kids to money, the less they’ll be afraid of it.”
– Sharran Srivatsaa
Timestamps:
01:08 – Why he replaced allowance with investing
04:12 – Thematic investing made simple for kids
06:04 – How Sharran built a $1,000 portfolio
09:18 – Introducing risk with MicroStrategy and Bitcoin
13:05 – The power (and fear) of volatility
13:34 – Why diversification protects your portfolio
14:33 – Patience as the secret to long-term growth
15:54 – Why simplicity beats complexity in investing
16:17 – Lessons parents can use to teach financial literacy
18:13 – The key to helping kids build confidence with money
Resources:
– The Next Billion by Sharran Srivatsaa
– Board Member: ARC Multifamily Real Estate Investing
– Board Member: The Real Brokerage
Connect with Sharran:
– X
– YouTube
– Threads
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Hey, this is Sharran Srivatsaa. Welcome back to the Business School Podcast. In this episode, I’m gonna talk to you about my son, who’s an 11-year-old investor. I’m gonna show you how we took a portfolio and grew it 600% in three years. I’m gonna give you the exact breakdown of exactly what we did. What we invested in and how you can do the two for yourself, for your children, for your family, and the lessons around why this is important and my gift to you in this process.
[00:00:23] So I break this all down step by step. Starting right now.
[00:00:33] One thing is for certain. Just because it’s tried and true doesn’t mean it’s working right now. So the big question is this, where can you learn what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology, and the exact how to, how to grow your business, how to blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth.
[00:00:55] That is the question. And this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharran Srivatsaa, and Welcome to Business School.
[00:01:08] So most parents give their kids an allowance, which I think is totally fine. But three years ago I had a different deal with my then 11-year-old son, Neil, and he loved to read. So I said, if you read a book, I’ll give you $50. Now, not because he begged for it, not because he asked for anything, just because I knew the books are worth it and I knew that he read.
[00:01:28] So I wanted to reinforce a good habit. By the way, it’s a really good thing. You always want to reinforce good habits, but he, here’s kind of where it gets interesting. I know his friends, while his friends were blowing their money on Robuck. By the way, if you don’t have children, Roblox is the Roblox Cash or more iPad time.
[00:01:46] Neil was learning something else. Every $50 that he earned. Went straight into investing. I didn’t give him the $50 in cash. I gave him the $50 to invest. And three years ago what I did was I, uh, opened a Robinhood account for him and because it, I wanted to give him the app so he could actually invest himself, he could learn investing and instead of giving him an empty app with $50 in it, I put a thousand dollars to show him how it works.
[00:02:13] I took the first thousand dollars and I said, alright, here’s a thousand dollars. Let’s actually show you how to invest. But here’s the crazy part. That thousand dollars that I invested today is worth in just three years, over $7,000, over a 600% return. But the real story is not about the money, it’s what happened kind of along the way, which is one I wanna share with you.
[00:02:34] So today I wanna break down for you the four investments that I made for this thousand dollars. Why? One of them went insanely crazy and. The father-son lessons that I learned with Neil. Maybe about patience, maybe about risk, but more about working together on something as a father and a son, but building wealth together.
[00:02:54] Something that I got to teach him in a very simple way. So let’s break it all down. Fran, I’m gonna give you the exact details, and maybe this is interesting to you, maybe for yourself, maybe for your children, maybe for whoever the, the, the book deal, right? So. The reason I started this was Neil just loved reading, but every other kid was getting paid in screen time and like video games and Xbox.
[00:03:15] And so I thought, what if I turn his love for books into something that compound, something that I could teach him, something that could be a father-son thing overall. So the deal was super simple. I said, Hey, you read a book, you tell me that you read the book and you get $50, no strings attached, but. How he, what he got was not $50 in cash.
[00:03:32] What he got was $50 in a Robinhood account. So the reason I went to Robinhood is I just didn’t wanna hand the cash and watch it disappear. I wanted him to actually see the money work. I wanted him to give him. I wanted to teach him delayed gratification. I wanted him to understand how it works. So. So I opened his Robinhood account.
[00:03:49] I put a thousand dollars of my own money in it, and then I wanted to show him how the first few investments worked. So I showed him the trade, so I set the expectations. I was like, it was not gonna make him rich overnight. I wanted, that’s what I explained to him because $50 invested in the market today is, you know, just $50.
[00:04:03] And so I wanted him to realize that the money. Could be in a cougar. It could be a crockpot. And it was about showing him that it could, you know, it could grow if you’re patient and smart. And so I picked four investments and I explained why, what they were to him. And I called this the thematic approach.
[00:04:19] So a thematic approach, you know, based on my, you know, just by background. I am not your financial advisor. I am my own. I have been on Wall Street, I, I was a banker at Goldman Sachs on a Credit Suisse. I’ve structured extremely complex deals. I’ve invested in over a hundred plus deals. I built $2 billion companies and I understand every fancy investment vehicle out there.
[00:04:38] Almost all of them. I also know the other scams and investment structures, maybe everything from 5, 3, 9 plans to Roth IRAs to custodial, to mutual funds. I know all of it, right? I get it. What I did instead was I threw all of that complexity kind of out the window. I didn’t wanna overload Neil with some random account or products or that he couldn’t understand or do something extremely dumb.
[00:05:02] Like what did, what, what did our parents do? Like what did the Ians, they said, oh, let me buy you one share of Disney. Like. That means nothing like that means that makes no sense. Like that’s cool that they got you a share of Disney and you got a stock certificate and put you on your door. I love my parents for doing that, but that was idiotic.
[00:05:19] Like they should not have done that. They didn’t teach me anything. They got me a share of Disney for vanity purposes and said they should have TE taught me what to actually do with it. And that’s what I want to do differently here. Now. I’m not throwing shade on anybody. I got a, I got a Disney certificate too, and I told my parents the same exact thing and so.
[00:05:35] After like learning all these complex structures, I realized something. The best investments are the ones that you can actually explain. And if I can, if Neil can’t tell you. After I explained to him why he did what he did, then he’s not learning anything. He’s, if he’s confused, I have totally failed. If you ask Neil today, Hey Neil, what do you believe in the future?
[00:05:53] He’ll say, I think technology’s gonna do well in the future. The tech powers are everything that I use, the tech powers, my games, my phone, my ai, and that’s the point. He gets it. And so he’s like, dad, how do I invest in technology for the future? So here’s what I did. I took the thousand dollars that I seeded the account with, and I split it into four pieces, $250 each, and I made three safe.
[00:06:12] Themes, three themes overall and one wild card. And this was September 20, 22, 3 years ago when the market was kind of shaky. It was kind of interesting. Crypto was in the in the gutter. So here’s how they all kind of shook up. So here’s what we picked, by the way, lemme tell you exactly. So we picked four investments.
[00:06:29] Theme number one was the, we bet on the future of technology. So we invested in all the technology companies. I like this technology. ETF called XLK. We put $250 in it. And so this is the kind of the AI and chip revolution, right? You got Apple and Microsoft and Nvidia and I told Neil, Hey, these companies kind of, they are the.
[00:06:47] The backbone, the power, everything that you love from your games, to your phone, to your, you know, what have you. And he got it immediately. He realized that in the future, tech would be bigger than it is today. So he’s like, oh, I get that. I get to invest in the future. I get to the growing version of tech overall.
[00:07:02] That’s cool. Right. And the second is. Which is essentially A ETF for the s and p 500. Now, why am I investing in these ETFs and non mutual funds? Like I’ll tell you the story later, but these are just low cost ways of getting some kind of thematic exposure to something. So essentially I was like, Hey, if you don’t own a company, you might as well own pieces.
[00:07:23] Of the five, 500 biggest companies. That’s one other way to do it. So I said, this is kind of like this, this steady approach, 500 of the America’s biggest companies. I explained it like this. Hey, if America business, if American businesses win, we win. Right? So Neil was like, okay, I get it now. I’m investing in like all the businesses in America.
[00:07:41] I get to wake up in the morning and cheer for America to do better. That was the s and p 500. That’s number two. The third is a little bit different One. Not a lot of people know about this. This is the SCHD. This is a Charles Schwab dividend, uh, ETF, and I just put another, you know, 25% into it. I think of this as the boring pick.
[00:08:00] I could have easily gone with a long-term pick, but I wanted to teach Neil something. I wanted to teach Neil what a dividend was and a dividend as you know. Is a little bit of cashflow paid back to the owner of the stock. And so essentially when they distribute a profit or cashflow to the owner of the stock, that’s what a dividend is.
[00:08:17] And so I wanted to explain to Neil what a dividend was. Otherwise he would never understand that concept. So he, so I said, Hey, think of it like getting paid to hold the stock. And he was like, okay, that’s interesting, but if you are going to do that, then you’re probably not gonna get growth simultaneously.
[00:08:32] So he understood that it was kind of slower but more reliable. And you know, if he got. If he got, he was trading the growth for a little bit of cash flow and he wanted to see how it works. So he understood the concept of what I always call getting paid to wait. And so that I explained that this was the defense in his portfolio.
[00:08:48] Now as, as at that point in time, Neil was starting to get into football and sports and I told him, I said, Hey, listen. This is like having defense on your football team, right? You need somebody to play defense, and if something happens, this will kind of balance out your portfolio and you started to get the idea with it.
[00:09:03] So now we have XLK, which is the growth function, which is the the technology ETF. We have the SP 500, which is the broad based steady ETF. We have the Boring pick, which is the SC hd, which is a dividend ETF, that pays a dividend every quarter. And last but not least, I was like, okay, well how do I throw a little spice into all of this?
[00:09:21] How do, what is the gamble here? How can I, how can I take a flyer on something? And I invested in the last $250 into MicroStrategy. Now, if you dunno what MicroStrategy is, it is a company or stock that go, goes out and it’s underlying security is Bitcoin. The company bet on everything. Bitcoin. And it’s actually leveraged too.
[00:09:39] So it, it actually does better than Bitcoin. I told Neil, I was like, Hey. This could crash or it could go to the moon. And I explained the idea of Bitcoin and I said, Hey, we’re taking the risk. I don’t know where it’s gonna go, but. We gotta, we gotta take a little, we gotta take a little risk here. And I explained to him what I thought of Bitcoin.
[00:09:54] I know. I, I don’t believe that it’s gonna take over. I, I’m not sure, I don’t know much about Bitcoin. I don’t think it’s gonna take over the world. I’m not putting my entire life savings in it. But I, I would be very, very upset that if I woke up in 10 years and I had zero Bitcoin exposure and it had gone to a million dollars, like I would be very, very upset.
[00:10:11] So even if it’s just a. A flyer, growth play, a risk play. I gotta do it. But I wanted to teach Neil that. I wanted to teach Neil that you don’t put 100% of your portfolio in Bitcoin. You get some exposure to it. You manage your risk around it. You get a little piece of it so that you can win alongside everything else.
[00:10:28] That is the, all of the portfolio in a lot of ways. So. Every as as you can understand as I’m sharing this with you, every single one of these kind of picks that I made had a story that my son, who was 11 could understand. There. There wasn’t like complicated like funds or a 401k or a 5 29 or like tax optimization.
[00:10:45] Like no, he was just investing in themes and that’s why I called this a thematic approach. So, lemme, lemme kinda break down for you what exactly happened three years later from September, 2022 to September, 2025? That that $1,000 is now over $7,000 is over 600% return, and Neil’s eyes were nuts when I showed him that.
[00:11:03] He had no idea. He had just forgotten because he was just going on and buying more $50 worth of stock every time he read a book. So super. Lemme give you the background on exactly what happens. XLK, which is a technology ETF, went up at over 125% in three years. So ’cause tech exploded, AI became the biggest story in business.
[00:11:21] Every time Neil played a game or used CGPT, I’d tell him, I’m like, Hey, this is your portfolio, and he could see like what I meant by that. That was the cool part. The next was SBY, which is the s and p 500. It has 73% gain, almost 25% each year. The s and p 500 totally did its job. It was slow and steady and this was our safety net.
[00:11:38] But it crushed like this is. A, it had a blowout. Blowout three years. Then SCHD, which is the the Charles Schwab Dividend Portfolio, slow and easy. 7% gain. Not much. The dividends kept rolling in, but the growth was slow. I told Neil, Hey, I was like, listen dude, this is what it feels like getting paid away. He was not impressed.
[00:11:57] He did not care, but he understood. He understood the theme of like the defense on a football team. That felt like a safety net when everything else got wild. And finally, MSDR, which is MicroStrategy, that own the underlying thing of Bitcoin. 2200% gain. I will tell you right now, this was the wild card that went bonkers.
[00:12:17] Bitcoin went from 19,000 ish dollars to 63,000 ish dollars. Like, and now, whatever it is, like, you know, $115,000 or whatever it is today as I’m recording this. And, and MicroStrategy just rode that wave. And Neil asked, he’s like, dad, is this real? I was like, yeah, kid. No kidding. It’s totally real. So I bought roughly a hundred in.
[00:12:39] Seven. Like if, if you, if total up all of this, the micro strategies alone made up for 82% of the portfolio, which is crazy if you think about it. Right? So the s and p 500 kind of returned 73% in that same period because that was the benchmark. We crushed it. And so, let’s be honest, I got super lucky with having MicroStrategy.
[00:12:59] So my point in sharing all of this with you is I want to tell you what we learn so big. Quick lessons. Lesson number one, that risk can pay off, but it’s extremely terrifying, especially when you’re trying to explain it to somebody. My strategies was like betting on a horse that could win big or like trip halfway through the race or do whatever.
[00:13:16] I lost sleep during the crypto dips in 2023. Like Microsoft Strategy dropped hard, like it was not a lot of money, but, but I, I had, I had some of my portfolio in it, but. And Neil wasn’t paying attention, but I was like, man, this is crazy, right? So if you can’t stomach the volatility, it’s super hard. So that’s lesson number one, which is risk can pay off, but it’s terrifying.
[00:13:34] Number two, the diversification saves you. There’s a lot of, you know, talk around like, you know, the, the Buffet Munger world about, you know, diversification is dumb. Well, it’s, diversification is dumb, and only if you control the risk otherwise, you know, buying the index is a good idea because very rarely, almost, you know.
[00:13:55] A very small percentage of active traders actually beat the index, and it’s super important, like the XLK and the SVY kept the portfolio growing. Even when this MicroStrategy wobbled, the dividend portfolio was slow, but those dividends felt like a safety net. It’s like. Think about this, it’s like going on a picnic and you’re plucking snaps, uh, snacks and a map for the road trip.
[00:14:16] You don’t, just don’t rely on just the GPS, you gotta have a few different things. So if micro strategies had crashed completely, we’d still be up 100% thanks to the other three, which is crazy if you think about it, right? So number two, diversification saves you, especially when you’re not.
[00:14:30] Actively managing this stuff. Here’s number three. He, he, I wanted investing is the long game, right? I wanted to teach Neil that three years felt fast to him, but for, for this is for Neil in his twenties or his thirties where time is a secret sauce. Time is the magic pill. I wanted to show him a chart of the portfolio’s growth like I had ai.
[00:14:49] Simulate the growth of this portfolio over time. And I said, this is what patience looks like. And he started to get it. He was like, man, if I don’t touch this for a while, I will have a lot. And he realized how starting early was important. I showed him how him starting then and me starting now, what would actually happen.
[00:15:02] And it’s crazy like that. That’s when you know what’s happening over time when you actually let, let time do its thing. That’s why they say it’s not timing the market. It’s time in the market. Right? And here’s lesson number four, simple beats complex because. You gotta be able to explain what you’re in when it’s not your daily thing.
[00:15:19] Now, if you’re an active trader, and that’s your daily thing, I get it, I understand it, but I’ve structured deals on Wall Street, I, I, that, that would make your head spin, right? So, so, but for my son, Neil, I almost chose to keep it simple. I, I, I talk about it. Again, it’s a thematic way. The themes that he could understand, the themes that he could explain back to me, the themes that he could explain to someone else, saying why he did what he did.
[00:15:38] You, complexity is the enemy of greatness. You need the clarity, you need the simplicity. If you can’t explain your investment to an 11-year-old. You should probably shouldn’t own it if that’s not your daily thing. So that was the big idea and I just wanted to show him that thing. So you may say, alright, you on, that’s very interesting.
[00:15:55] Like, I’m not gonna do without, with my son. Like, what, what’s in this for me? So I wrote down like a few lessons, right? So one, you gotta just start small. I put a thousand dollars in. That’s it. You gotta, you don’t need to invest, wait to invest millions of dollars for your kids. Even $100 in an ETF can show them how all of this works.
[00:16:13] Number two. Talk, keep talking about themes. You wanna talk about, Hey, where is healthcare going? Where is AI going? Where is, where are these sports teams investing and where is China gonna do better? Is India gonna do better? Is is the US gonna do better? Like, what are the themes that you want to actually invest in, not the, not products or mutual funds or whatever.
[00:16:32] The third is I just talk about like balancing risk. And you can always say, Hey, what if, you know, if you’re flying, like, I’m a, you know, I’m taking flying lessons and I always. Tell my son, Hey, if one engine fails, what happens to the other? You gotta balance the risk in some way. So he starts to understand, you know, balancing of risk.
[00:16:50] Um, the fourth lesson is, I think you gotta te we gotta teach our kids early. The, the earlier you could introduce them to money, the, the less they are afraid of it, the more they are open to it, the more they understand it, the more they get interested in it, the more they feel comfortable around it. It’s no different.
[00:17:05] I think about money and, and swimming the same exact way. The sooner you can introduce them to water, the less they’re afraid of the water. The sooner you can introduce them to swimming, the less they’re afraid of swimming. The sooner you can introduce them to money, the less they’re afraid of money.
[00:17:16] You’re just giving them, exposing them, explaining to them that they, they can have a healthy relationship with this. They can figure out how to make it. They’re not scared about it. They, it doesn’t freak ’em out. They, the numbers don’t freak. I just wanna give them a, a good understanding and teaching them early on how it works.
[00:17:29] How does all this work? Uh, give them the right terminology, give ’em the right understanding because they pick up the stuff early and it’s really good. And the last part is, I, I wanna help them understand that. This is, it’s a skill. Learning is hard, right? Learning is hard. And so, but when you have time, it’s a great journey to be on together.
[00:17:46] Making mistakes are okay, but time and it’s a skill and research are actually really, really good. And that was the kind of the big, big idea in all of this. So. The reason I’m sharing this with you is this, this quote thousand dollars portfolio that became $7,000 started with a book deal that I had with my son for a thousand dollars.
[00:18:03] It became 7,000. And, you know, call it the lesson in, in the lesson that I shared with you in, in patience and risk and, and building something that lasts in like a father-son relationship overall. So. All I would ask for you to do is if, is to expose your children to money early on, because the more awareness you give them early on, just think about money being like water in a pool.
[00:18:23] The more you can give them exposure to stuff early on, the easier it’ll be for them to understand it, to accept it, and to be comfortable around, because that is what makes them. You know, better investors, better operators, better fathers, better friends, better husbands, better wives, whatever. Because they’re more comfortable with the thing that we all spend our whole life trying to get more of.
[00:18:42] Hey, um, if that was like, this can help you as well, if that was interesting to you. Can you do me a favor? Uh, please. One, send this to like a, another parent, ’cause I think that would be helpful to them. But too, if you like this, can you screenshot this and tag me? Maybe more of your audience can see it that way I can make more like this for you.
[00:18:56] So if you like this, do me a favor, screenshot this and tag me and I make more like this for you.
[00:19:07] Hey, this is Sharran. I have an awesome free gift for you just for listening to the podcast. As you may know, I’ve got a chance to build $2 billion companies the hard way. So if you like this episode, you’ll love getting the exact playbooks from those wins. It’s on my Substack, called My Next Billion. It has the exact frameworks I wish someone had given me when I was figuring it all out. Now you get the real lessons from the trenches as I go for a three-peat and build the next billion. So everything’s free at mynextbillion.com. Please check it out at mynextbillion.com.