Ep.67 Profit over Politics w/ Priya Patel

Ever looking for investments that are free from political motivation? Programming Lions speaks with Priya Patel, Azoria Partners Head of Strategic Partnerships. Hear a new approach to merit based businesses, plus a young, female perspective on culture, feminism and more.

Azoria: 

IG: https://www.instagram.com/investazoria/

X: https://x.com/investazoria

Azoria (all platforms) - investazoria

Azoria Meritocracy ETF ticker:  SMXP

Priya Patel: 

IG - https://www.instagram.com/priyaee/

X - @priyaee

TIMELINE

00:00 Intro

03:05 Woke capitalism

04:34 DEI & ESG in corporations

06:57 Pendulum change

09:39 Azoria meritocracy fund

11:57 Vote with dollars

13:25 Patriotic youth

15:42 Whatever podcast

19:58 Wrap up

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Programming Lions Podcast. Today, we have Priya Patel on the show. We linked up with her at AmFest and it was a great discussion. She is currently the head of strategic partnerships at Azoria, which is an investment firm committed to free thinking, excellence, and meritocracy. She's also a young patriot, political activist, and strives to affect change in these youth generations. So we're going to cover non woke investing, culture wars, modern women, and much more. So let's get into it. Yeah.

PRIYA_PATEL-Matt-webcam-00h_00m_00s_348ms-StreamYard: 0:36

Priya Patel is with us on the Programming Alliance podcast. We're excited to have you here. I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having me. All right. Well, thanks for taking the time. And as we get started, for the audience's benefit, could you give us a little bit about your background and what you do for Azoria? Absolutely. So, Azoria is a brand new investment firm that we launched a few weeks ago at Mar a Lago. And we're launching our first ETF in March of 2025. And essentially what we're going to be doing is taking all the companies in the S and P 500, but excluding all the ones that hire based off of woke DEI hiring and promotion policies. So we're really excited to launch that and give, Americans an alternative to the S and P and see really, really good returns on their investments. We expect that we're going to be outperforming the S and P. Yeah. But as far as my background goes and my position at Azoria, I'm head of strategic partnerships at Azoria. So I take care of a lot of the communications and whatnot. But, yeah, I actually graduated a few weeks ago from ASU online as a political science major. Amazing. I think as we invest in, there's a lot of people that think about this, like, how do we get our money? So it's not in the hands of the black rocks and vanguards and the companies that are doing things that seemingly hate us and get it into the hands of companies that are really looking out for their investors best interest. And so that sounds amazing. It'll be interesting. I imagine there's a lot of companies. I know with our financial advisor. I sent him a long list of like, these are the companies I want to make sure are not in any of our kind of doing that. But but formalizing it into an ETF and that'll be pretty neat. And boys, do you know what an ETF is? No, I know ET, you know, ET phone home guy. Okay. It's a little different. ETF is a, an exchange traded fund. It's a conglomeration of a lot of different companies into sort of one fund, right? So it's like Walmart and the, and the Home Depot. Well, you can think about like Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe's, like all these companies would go together into one exchange traded fund. And then it would blend out, so if one company does a little bit bad, one company does good, it kind of balances out and you, you have a little bit smoother process. Return. Yeah. Is that fair to say? Okay. Well, we appreciate what you and the Azoria team are doing. Cause I think we need more of these alternate investment opportunities. And so that's that's exciting to hear. Well, with that, we've got a number of questions that we outlined for you. So, if you're ready for the hard hitting stuff, we're going to get at it. Let's do it. All right. So, woke capitalism, how do you describe that? Woke capitalism? I would say that woke capitalism is perfectly described as companies and owners of companies and investors that try and push a political agenda on their consumers, and in turn, so DEI, for example, hiring or excluding to hire people based off of their skin color or their gender, right, which essentially is wrong in and of itself, but you're not hiring the people that are best qualified for those positions. And and I think it's also very insulting to say that people of all colors and creeds aren't capable of achieving things of their own merit, that they need handouts to be able to achieve them. But, it ends up hurting everybody because performance goes down and people aren't able to hold up to the standard that they were likely hired for if they're not qualified. Sounds like a superhero like team. Yeah. Yeah. DEI. Yeah. Not quite. It's like the opposite of a superhero. You're a supervillain team. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it is. It's a destructive ideology. And a discriminator, discriminatory one at that. Right, right. I mean, what better way to fight racism than with more racism? Exactly. Right? It's genius. Genius. Well, that's liberal logic. Okay. Anyway, do you think a lot of these companies, They have DEI and I think it's like ESG or something in them already or are they pressured to do it? You know, I think a lot of them are pressured to do it and have been so over the past four years specifically we've seen a huge spike in DEI hires and quotas in the last year alone so As much as I think that the culture is going to be shifting away with the new administration I think we still have a lot of work to do in that aspect. I actually came out of the corporate world about 25 years in it. And so, without calling anything out specifically, I can say that I saw this, coming into corporate culture. Yeah. And, really, I don't want to say destroying corporate culture, but definitely, having an impact and a negative one and causing resentment and animosity within an organization. Absolutely. And so, I do think it can be very dangerous. But Yeah, in my humble observation and discussing with, let's say, other people in the corporate world, there is this pressure that they feel. Absolutely. And it comes from two sources. It comes externally from maybe vendors, sponsors, customers, that customers that have to comply to the same thing. So like if you're servicing a government organization or a municipality or, Whatever that has these types of D. E. I. R. E. S. G. Programs. They want a lot of times they have flow downs within their contracts that you have to comply with, and so I definitely saw some of that. And then internally, you'd see a small contingent of the organization, but a very loud voice that would be pushing, pushing, pushing. And that's why I think you see companies changing their logo during the month of June and all of this. And it's not because is. The majority wants it, it's because there's a really strong minority with a loud voice. Is that, what you see as well? Yeah, very much so, and I think that is actually very representative of, how the left has shifted the social climate in the last, probably, decade. It's always been a very, very small group of people pushing for these drastically radical policies. But they're just the loudest people in the room. Yeah. Right? Like, they're just always the ones at the forefront of all the news, and they're in your face constantly, so you can't forget it. They're very assertive. Yes. Yes. But it feels a little bit like the pendulum is swinging. You know, you see people like Robbie Starbuck out there calling out some of these organizations in some ways, embarrassing them for their policies and they're tracking back on them. You've seen Walmart recently and others. So what's your sense of being out more in in the mix of this and the work that you do Are you seeing the wind starting to change a little bit? You know, we are and Robbie's actually a good friend of our CEO James Fishback And okay And I know that they they've talked very highly of each other and what they're trying to do with each of their each of their their missions essentially and And yeah, and as far as Azoria goes for for this ETF specifically You None of these companies, so all the companies that we're going to be excluding, we've identified about three dozen of them. Two of the biggest ones that we've publicly named so far, and we will publicly name all of them have been Starbucks and Best Buy. And Starbucks and Best Buy are two beloved American brands, right? I don't know a single American that isn't aware of both of them and probably hasn't shopped at both of them, right. Many times in their life. But The returns on the, the, like the stock market mm-hmm For these companies specifically have drastically underperformed the s and p itself. Yeah. And essentially customers see the effects of DEI mm-hmm When they're, when they're at the locations. Right. Yeah. If I have to wait 15 minutes for a black cup of coffee mm-hmm That's ridiculous. Right. I'm sorry. And it's not due to the wifi or the coffee machine. Yeah. It's due to the work ethic and the lack of incentivizing good performance with the workplace culture, and I think with D. I. Especially you were talking about like the growing amount of animosity that you felt in the workplace, the more that these policies were implemented, and I think that's a really, really important thing to point out because it really casts a shadow over, you know, people that might belong to minority communities and your peers look at you and wonder whether you got to where you are simply because you. Check off a box of some sort of quota, or if you actually earned it based off of your talent and your performance and your work ethic. Yeah, yeah. I had some minorities that worked for me when I was, when I was working. And they said, if I got my promotion because of my skin color, I would be offended. Yeah. I hope that is not the case. Exactly. I want to earn what I get. And I really appreciate folks like that. But yes, there is resentment that comes up because when it's, not clear that people are, are being promoted or being put into their positions because of merit, and it really causes a lot of resentment and that can be really destructive for a culture of an organization. Kind of like in our business, you know, max, like if you're not like pulling your weight, right. You know what I'm saying? All right. Good discussion about DEI. We had another topic we wanted to get into. Oh, You have this platform thing, I forget what it's called. Yeah, it's a fund called the Azoria Meritocracy. Yeah. Yeah, so, what is it, and are you guys like receiving a lot of support with it? Azoria Meritocracy 500 fund is the ETF that we're planning on launching in March, and like I kind of said, we're, we're essentially accumulating a copycat index, will you of the S& P 500, but excluding those three dozen. Minus the, yeah, minus the woke capitalists. Exactly, the woke capitalists, DEI promotion companies. Do you have more funds planned yeah, we do have more funds planned. None of them are publicly announced yet, but we do have quite a few in the works. Okay, yeah, because I imagine there's other, yeah, there's other angles you could go with that. Yeah we're looking forward to it, especially with the meritocracy fund. We're not interested in pushing any, any sort of political agenda on any of these companies, and especially like our personal politics. But, all we want is like, For these companies to just take the politics out of the equation all together, right? Seems reasonable. It seems reasonable. So how does one get, get on the list of early investors? And how, and I guess like the second question would be, How much commitment do you have so far? I don't know how much you can talk about that. But you have a pretty sizable commitment towards the fund? Yeah, we just closed seed round of 25 million dollars. Oh. So we've received That's real money, guys. That's a lot of money. Yeah. That's a lot of money. So we, we've received a lot of really positive support from people on both sides of the aisle because there's no denying the numbers and the performance of a lot of these companies that are, you know, suffering at the hands of these policies, you know? People of both the Democratic and Republican and Independent parties all would like to see returns on their investments. None of us want to lose money due to some sort of political agenda. Yeah, yeah, okay. Once this goes live, can people buy it through their normal broker, or? Okay. Yeah, yeah, and the ticker's gonna be SMXP. SMXP? Okay. Is it uppercase or lowercase? Uppercase. Oh. It doesn't matter. It doesn't really matter, but SMXP. Okay. We're gonna, I'll keep that on my watch list and look out for it. So, very good. Well, okay. So any of our audience, they can, they can look for that. Absolutely. And check it out. Yeah. We're hoping that people will, you know, switch over from the SMP and switch over to us. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We need to sort of, what do they say? Like vote with your money, kind of? Exactly. Yeah. How do you vote with your money? Don't you? Wait, how is that possible? It's sort of like support, not supporting companies that don't support your values and supporting those that do. Oh, that makes a lot of sense. But that's not like an election. No, no, not like an election. So it's like, boys, you know how we don't subscribe to the Disney Channel? No. Even though they have a couple good movies. Not many anymore. No, they're all old now. But we, that's, that's sort of, that's what we do. example of like voting with your money, so we don't invest income in businesses or or companies that we don't think they're like Operating with good values. Yeah, that makes sense And then ultimately if enough people do that it the company has to change And that's what we're hoping is gonna happen with these companies is that they're gonna feel the the impacts of people deciding to vote with their wallet. And hoping that kind of helps push, push these companies to enact that positive change and go back to meritocracy. Because overall, that's what's better for everyone. It's, time tested. Right. And and yeah, I mean, it's, it's a recipe for success. If you hire people based off of their skill, ability and performance. Rather than some immutable trait that nobody can control, right? I love it. I love it. I just I noticed you have a 1776. What does the necklace mean to you? What does You know, I grew up in a very patriotic family. It was instilled in me at a very young age. That's why I love seeing the two of you guys. Well, all of you guys, what you guys are doing, I think it's amazing. And it's really, really uplifting to see so many young, really young Americans loving this country and really standing up for its values. But you're young. Not me, but you two. You two. He's still young. Your dad's young. They're hard. They're hard, baby. Your thoughts. Thoughts. Thoughts. That too. That too. I feel young, but, you know, age catches up with you. Yeah. Okay, so that's cool. Yeah. So you've just always kind of been a part of a patriotic family. It was instilled in me at a young age and yeah, now I just, and as I've gotten older, my love for this country has grown and my. Desire to fight for what's good beautiful and true in this country has also grown so yeah Well, I love that and we need young patriots in Gen Z and Gen Alpha We're lighting a fire under Gen Alpha. We need to get the pendulum swinging back for the next generations, In a lot of ways, my generation and those before me, we kind of pulled the ladder up behind us, right? We, we put in some rough policies some inflationary policies that are really hurting your generations in terms of, you know, what you can buy. I do not get disgraced by what you're saying. Like, pulling the ladder back, lighting a fire on Mission Alpha. What it means is our generation took advantage of monetary policy and tried to, serve our own best interest to some extent. And that caused a future debt, we've saddled your generation with a lot to recoup from. And inflation is probably the most obvious one, just in terms of how much it's gonna cost you guys to buy a home, and All of that. And probably have two people in your household working. Yeah. And, you know, things that weren't necessarily required for me, or certainly my parents. But but nonetheless, I got another question for you. Alrighty, alrighty. Now, this one, boys this is not, this is maybe a little bit more sort of mature side, but Yeah. I podcast. Yes. And so this is not a podcast the boys have seen, for obvious reasons. For the better, yeah. It's like, if you were to go and bathe in a pool of degeneracy, Max this, Wait, you're in a pool of degeneracy? Some of the, some of the guests, not Priya, but some of the guests on this show anyway, I'll explain it to you, I'll explain it to you later. Diddy's not a guest on the show. It's actually a very interesting show. It is a very interesting show. It highlights a lot of the challenges between men and women and masculinity and femininity and the drive. I'm making fun a little bit, but it's actually a really interesting show. And I think some of the takes that you get out of it are really interesting. Great, so you were on the show. Yes, and I just have to know what was this like, you know, it's always been really really interesting I when I Initially went on. I didn't have a whole lot of knowledge of the show I had seen clips and I'm a big Michael Knowles fan So that's kind of how I found it was when he did his first appearance on there Okay, and when I went on I was kind of unprepared I knew the gist of the show, but I never actually watched it fully through or anything of that sort and I Had the opportunity and I was like, you know what? I know that I'm not gonna Misrepresent myself and my values. I'm like confident in that but you know You At worst, you know, I decide never to do it again, but at best it could be a really good and like interesting experience Yeah and so I went on I actually thoroughly enjoyed myself And hit it off with the host brian and and the the guys that worked for him and they invited me back on Relatively soon after and i've done about I think 11 or 12 appearances. Have you done that many? Wow over the last like year and a half or so what even is a show like I'll explain it to you later, but we don't want to take up too much of our time with Priya here. Do you find that you are able to, like, spark some thought in the women across the table? Like, how does that work? Yeah, yeah, so, I mean, it's really interesting. It kind of depends on the specific person that I've been talking to. Because the college girls, per se, that, you know, just lean into That type of culture. Yeah they just a lot of the times don't know better and they think oh, i'm young I might as well live live it up have fun. Yeah, there's no ramifications Absolutely, and you know, there's been a lot of positive. Positive reactions as far as i'm sure what i've said and plenty of other people on that show as well Yeah i've been on with some amazing other guests that have been great at communicating that message as well with me But yeah, you know a lot of people have been really positively receptive to it and then others like the women that are in the adult film industries per se have either you know I find that a lot of the times they have gone through some significant trauma. Yes, and are Horribly damaged by it. Yeah, and they they truly don't understand the ramifications of what they're doing Whether that be to them or the consumers of these films and then you get the other side where these women are actually really intelligent There was one that I was on with and she was brilliantly smart amazing to engage with in conversation You And she knew that, like, she openly admitted, Yeah, I know what I'm doing is not conducive to society. If anything, it hurts society. And I know it's, I know it's not beneficial for me, but I don't care. And it's, it's just, it's really interesting seeing people like that. And, you know, outside of, you know, the conversations about the adult film industry and like their what they do for work. Yeah. They seem like really really genuine people. Yeah which you know kind of breaks my heart even more that they've gone down this path I haven't personally met any of them that really other than you know I do think it's an evil thing to say Yeah I know that what I'm doing is really really at the detriment of myself and society and all the consumers of these things that I'm doing They have a moral backbone they choose to set it aside when it comes to this, whether it be for the money or the attention or whatever it might be. it's really disheartening to see in that aspect. But I have noticed a lot of positive, like positive change, not only from that podcast, but those alike it as well. Kind of showing young women and young men like, Hey, This is not the way to go about these things. Yeah, there's a different road you can take, right? Exactly, and like, this is not conducive to your happiness, or your flourishing in the current or the long term. Me too. But yeah, well hopefully you've inspired some of these young women to think, yeah, think differently, or anybody that's thinking about going into that line of work that is detrimental to their future. Well anyway, I appreciate you going on and representing a virtuous side of all of that and yeah it's it's actually sad we get trolls in our social media thread I'm sure I really feel bad for these people There's a lot of people that have had trauma in their lives and in some ways they they take it out in different in different ways Whether it's their line of work, or they just take out their anger on other people. And, instead of lashing back at them, I, you know, we try to understand and we try to be nice, but there's a lot of hurt people out there. And so my heart opens up to them, but at the same time, we, you know, we can't tolerate it, we can't normalize it. Absolutely. So you have to tell people the truth. If it's like obesity or something it's like well sometimes being truthful is the most compassionate thing you can do I 100 percent agree. I don't know. Are you are you guys particularly religious? Christian yeah Yeah, We've all been brought up Christian we go to Typically like holidays But, I would say this experience of starting a podcast, doing this family thing, and having some, interesting sort of moral moments, it's actually bringing us closer to God. Yeah. Yeah. And I just feel like the lessons that I was, that I've always learned through Christianity, they're starting to come to fruition, we're doing something that's hard, and we're getting a lot of wind in our face, and we've lost friends, but we're making new ones, like yourself and others. And we're finding that our new friends are more aligned it's really been a rewarding journey that we're on. But I won't bore you with any more of that. It's really important the work that you're doing. And I've got two young boys. And so obviously I want them to grow up in a world where men and women aren't at odds with each other. That they're looking at each other like a unity and a partnership that they can get together. There's no, like one is better than the other. We need each other. And I can say in our relationship with my wife, it's incredible. For And she does things I can't do, I do things she doesn't want to do, whatever. It works. It's very interesting to see this whole cultural shift that's happened over the last, you know, you know, Probably 50 years or so with the rise of feminism and similar movements. Basically saying that the sexes are, you know, there's no distinctions between the two of them. Right, right. They're the same, they're interchangeable, there's no difference between you or I or you and your wife and, you know, and that you don't need each other. Yeah. It's like the reality is that. We do need each other and we're very different, but that's not a bad thing. That doesn't make us, unequal in any way, shape or form, but we play different roles and those roles are meant to be complimentary to each other, right? To work together, to it, similar to any sort of workplace, you know, it's a collaborative effort to achieve a goal. And the more people that you're able to incorporate with that, likely the better outcome that you're going to have in the higher, the goal that you're going to be able to achieve. Right. Yeah, exactly. Well, you're an inspiration for a lot of people. I appreciate what you're doing on the sort of social and cultural wars. And I love the work that Azaria is doing. We'll definitely share that more with our audience. So thank you so much prior for coming on the podcast. We appreciate your time and everything you're doing. Appreciate you guys.