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Hi, I'm Alexis O'Hanyan. You may know me as one of the co-founders of Reddit, but more recently. A large part of my identity is being a father to my wonderful daughters. In my podcast, Business Dad, I hope to open the conversation about working parents a bit. You'll get to hear from a wide range of business dads from Rainn Wilson, Guy Raz, to Todd Carmichael, and Shane Batty-A to find out how they balance being a dad with a successful career. Business Dad is available now, so be sure to listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm here

to share a truth with you. And so I am ready to share my truth. And the truth is I love scam artists. I mean, I don't love scam artists. I love learning about them. I love reading books about them, watching documentaries about them. I love learning about the Tele Shopping Queen, Bono Marquis in Italy. I like learning how to avoid creeps like Simon Levine, the Tinder Swindler. I even liked watching both fire festival documentaries the day they came out and have listened to every single radio edit of every Billy McFarland interview that exists in this dimension. I'm obsessed. And I think we can all learn a lot from scam artists. You know, not like how to live your life or something, but specifically how money functions in our society. So if you're ready to go on this journey with me, today I would like to teach you money lessons from famous scam artists. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So how did I get here? Well, I'm an artist, you know, minus the scam part. I'm a poet and a filmmaker specifically. And when I started my arts journey full time over a decade ago, I was unprepared for the amount of grants I'd have to write. But it turns out that a lot of being a professional artist is fundraising for your own salary. So I got good at grants. I got so good at grants, I started writing grants for other people. And one year alone, through writing grants for folks, running people's fundraising campaigns, supporting mutual aid efforts, I was able to help move $1.3 million directly into the hands of Black trans individuals and organizations. Thank you.

I started

consulting with philanthropic organizations on the best way to support targeted communities, and I teach reparations frameworks all across the country. So I know why people give money. And honestly, a lot of it is great storytelling and scam artists are really good at spinning a narrative. Now, the first famous scam artist I'd like to tell you all about is the infamous Elizabeth Holmes. So Elizabeth Holmes, who founded Theranos, was able to rake in about a $9 billion valuation for a product that didn't even work. For those of you that don't remember, Elizabeth Holmes, because you somehow, I don't know, missed the competing podcast, the book, the documentary, and the very public trial, let me remind you who she is. So she started Theranos under the premise that they would be creating a device that could read hundreds of medical tests through a single drop of blood.