Encarta | 3 Business Ideas You Should Start in 2024 (ft. Pomp) (#524)

00:10

Well, I guess we're live. Pomp, do you do do people ever introduce you by your real full name? Or you just are you are you Pomp at all times?

00:19

Yeah. I some people do, but, people get offended. If I go to a conference and I introduce myself as Anthony, and then later they're like, wait, you're Pomp? Like, who knows as Anthony? Like, well, that is, you know, my name. My my parents didn't name me that.

00:32

Well, then then we're gonna keep you as pumped. We have pomp here pump. You've been on the pod a handful of times, and we've talked about you a handful of times. And we've been on your pod a handful of times. And so it's nice to have you back. Congratulations on on new family member and you're here recently after doing it. So we appreciate that. Yeah. Of course. Just, just three dads hanging out on the internet who who could have guessed.

00:54

I had a good, joke that I didn't get to do the other day when Sam Altman was in the news, and then, like, it's like Jack Altman comes out says something. And then Max Altman comes out and says something. And his sister, Annie Altman comes. I'm like, how many fucking Altmans are there? There's more Altmans than Pomplianos now. What's happening here? I feel like you have, like, brothers coming out the woodwork as well. Do you feel that your, you know, your your sibling dominance is threatened in any way by the Altmans right now?

01:20

I did see people making that joke, and I did Google how many Altmans there are, and there are not more Altmans than Pomplianos so we're safe for the moment.

01:29

What,

01:30

I don't even know how to describe you. So I think a lot of our listeners will know who you are. So we we don't have to spend that much time, but, like, you started out as, like, kind of a one trick pony. You're just basically the guy on Twitter who talked about Bitcoin, but now you've evolved significantly beyond that. You've got, like, the Pomp media empire, but then you've also, like, started. I don't even know how many businesses many though. Hold on, Sam. Can we do an analogy?

01:53

You know, pump going from Bitcoin laser eyes to real estate and all kinds of other shit that he's doing now. Is it,

02:02

is this

02:03

Justin Timberlake

02:04

from Nsync now going solo Justin Timberlake? You know, what what's the

02:09

What's the right analogy here? Who who has made such a transition? Such a life pivot like this. Is there anyone that's done this in Hollywood?

02:17

Well, here here's the thing is, it's not really a pivot if you kind of expand out off of the internet. Right? So if you think about I started my career building companies, then I went and I worked at Facebook,

02:27

then I started investing. And then once I was investing, that's really where, kind of the Bitcoin stuff happened.

02:33

But even the stuff on the internet, I worked directly with, you know, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg for a short period of time at Facebook when they were trying to figure out how do they grow their audiences on Facebook? I remember early on when Fuck Jerry, the Instagram account. They were trying to go from Instagram and figure out what's their Facebook strategy.

02:49

And so the reason why I say that is, like, I don't know. Think of, like, a Kim Kardashian. She goes from, like, sex tape to reality TV star to, like,

02:57

entrepreneur billionaire to now, like, criminal justice reform to, I think she's gonna be president of the United States one day. And then look at that, and you're like, actually, the same thing that makes sex tape go viral gets you elected to be president today. So, like, in some ways, it's actually the exact same skill set just, you know,

03:14

packaged up in a different way and, with different ambitions or or aspirations.

03:19

You have this really good job of, like,

03:21

brute forcing yourself into, like, interesting networking opportunities. So, like, I feel like I think Shaan is actually better than this than I am, but, like, I just hang out with a small crew just like internet nerds, you've done a really good job of, like, meeting actual

03:36

big shots, I think. Right? I mean, like, you I don't even know all the people that you know, but you're telling me how you met Julian Robertson, who's the guy who started Tiger man or is it Tiger Management? Tiger Management.

03:47

But you you actually, like, you and then you just you weren't trying to, but you just named dropped Zuck. And I think you've worked for Snapchat and hung out with, Evan a bunch. You you've done a really good job of, like,

03:57

meeting all these, like, crazy, fascinating people. You know what I mean?

04:01

Yeah. I mean, I think it's just, like, if you're a curious person,

04:04

other curious people wanna be around those types of folks. And then also,

04:09

I probably

04:10

more so than many of my friends say yes to opportunities.

04:14

Even when it's not very clear, like, what is the purpose for doing this.

04:17

And so if you do that enough times, like, it's just kinda like shots on goal. Like, you will meet some of these fascinating,

04:23

or successful people. But each one of them is very different. I mean, Julian Robertson, that story is,

04:28

Mark, Mark Yusko, who,

04:31

started, Morgan Creek Capital Management,

04:33

we did a joint venture with him to, raise a couple venture capital funds. And Mark was this former CIO of the UNC endowment. Back in their late nineteen nineties, early two thousands. And at that time, Julian Robertson was kind of, like, in his hay day. Right? This was, like, hedge funds were really getting off the ground. Mark Yusko and UNC had a really big hand in getting, endowments specifically to invest in these hedge funds, and Julian Robertson was on his board.

04:58

So that's how Mark and Julian met. Now as Mark would tell the story,

05:02

eventually Julian was like, hey, this kid, Chase Coleman, who now runs Tiger Global, He's leaving. I'm gonna give him some money, and he sent him down to go talk to Mark, and Mark gave, like, the sixth and seventh million dollar to chase Coleman to start Tiger Global. Now when you look at that, you're like, okay. Mark Yusko and Julian Robertson had known each other for twenty or thirty years. In I think it was 2019,

05:23

Mark calls me up one day, and he's like, hey, Now's the time. Like, we're gonna go meet a bunch of, like, the legends of Wall Street.

05:30

And one of them was Julian. Julian was actually the first stop of the day. And so, the things I remember from it is, like, one, you kinda feel like you're going to meet a legend. So, like, more so than usual, you're, like, nervous, but excited.

05:43

And we walk in and he's had the same office for a number of years.

05:48

He had three secretaries.

05:49

Which I thought, first of all, it's just, like, that's baller. They all sat outside his office and, like, each had different responsibilities.

05:55

So I was, like, okay. Like, that's, that's different. And mind you, Julian, at this point, is I think, like, he's definitely in his eighties. And so,

06:04

we go in to see him. And he sits down, kind of in, like, this, like, almost, like, living room area in his office. And he was the single most curious legend of Wall Street I've ever met. He sat with us for an hour and just kept berating me with questions and and just trying to actually understand Bitcoin and blockchain technology and all these things. And you're just like, man, this guy does not have to be here right now. He does not have to be doing this stuff. Like, he is rich, on rich, on rich,

06:29

And he's also, like, pretty old. He's gotta know that, like, he doesn't have another fifty years to live, but he's sitting here trying to learn. And so about halfway through the conversation, all of a sudden, you could see, like, the proverbial, like, light bulb goes off in his head, and he just sits back in his couch and looks up at the ceiling, and, like, starts talking to the ceiling. And I remember being, like,

06:50

damn. Am I boring? Like, did I lose him? And he had a microphone

06:54

in the ceiling and a speaker so he could talk directly out to the three, like, assistants. And he basically just started asking, like, hey. Send so and so in here. Like, go find this. Whatever. I was like, this guy, like, built, like, Jarvis in his office, like, way before anyone else has this. He is absolutely a legend. So it was a really cool experience. Unfortunately, he passed away. But, but things like that are just, you know, once in a lifetime opportunities that are that are prequel.

07:20

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07:32

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07:36

And what I know about Julian, and and maybe Shaan, I don't know if if this guy if you ever re researched So I'll explain to you, but also the listener. But Julian,

07:44

he what's it? It was called Tiger. Right? I mean, it was just Tiger Management.

07:48

So he started, like, Tiger, which was revolutionary and made him worth. I don't even know how many billions. It was revolutionary, why? Because... What what did they do differently? Did they make good investments or did did they actually do something different? He he's one of he's one of, like, the very first, like, true hedge funds. Right? Like, he he basically was, hey, I'm not just gonna do, like, value investing. Like, I'm I'm a true hedge fund. And I think that he had, like, a a lot of what we all look at the internet today. We're like, oh, that person's doing something interesting. It was different. He had high conviction, and he ended up being right. And so he was able to gather a lot of assets. He was able to drive a pretty good return

08:21

And he did it at a time where this whole concept of, like, hedging or, like, going long and short, wasn't necessarily the traditional way of investing.

08:29

And so I don't know if they actually consider him, like, the godfather of hedge funds, but he basically could be considered that.

08:35

And then,

08:37

you know, the lore of Julian kind of

08:39

expanded even more when a bunch of people who worked for him left, he would seed them. And when he would seed them to get them off the ground, those guys now known as Tiger Cubs became very successful. Tiger Global probably being the most successful. And so it was like, hey, he was good as an investor, but he was even better at, like, a talent,

08:57

you know, kinda identifier and then seeding these people to create these great firms. Tiger Cubs is like PayPal mafia, basically, a finance.

09:05

But it's way bigger. So so Google Tiger Cubs finance Wikipedia. And you could just go to the Wikipedia page, but they have sections where it's called Tiger Cubs.

09:13

Tiger Grand Cubs and Tiger Great Grand Cubs. And it's literally it looks like if I'm just scrolling through, it looks like a hundred plus names.

09:21

And,

09:22

I guess, it's he he found these guys and he because of his culture and because of, kind of, his vibe, they've all kinda taken a little bit, a little bit of him And it's some of the biggest names, like, including that guy, what what was the guy named Bill who, had, like, that who, like, brought down the economy? Was it, like, unplugged the he unplugged Wall Street accidentally. He, like, tripped over the cord and unplugged it. Yeah. Yeah. He, like, brought down the economy, like, threw a couple bad bets And then there's, like, Chase Coleman who is worth, I don't know, twenty billion dollars who has tiger man who who what was it called? I'm getting all the names wrong Tiger. And then you have, like, Coatue.

09:57

I just can't even say these names. These are all names that let Oh, Juicy Couture. Oh, wow. This guy's prolific. He's starting Gucci. Coatue.

10:04

These are

10:06

no. I know what you're saying. It's a word you've only read. You've never had to say out loud. Like, you know like when I first saw Hermoine. Yeah it's embarrassing. I don't know. What the hell is this what's her name? I have no idea how you say this. It's the words that you accelerate through. You just say them really quickly and hope no one noticed that you mispronounced them.

10:22

What, what attributes do you think other than curiosity

10:25

Did he have that kind of spread to all these other guys who have done? Like, for example, Chase Coleman's an interesting one because you can't really re like, if you googled Chase Coleman, the guy's worth, I think, fifteen billion something in that range, there's, like, four pictures of him on the internet.

10:39

Like, what and so these, like, mysterious guys are always they're always fascinating. What attributes do you think some of these people have that started with Julian?

10:47

Yes. I I obviously met Julian. There's a bunch of other folks that I've met over the years, that would kinda fall similar to Julian. And usually it is not unfortunately, in a situation where I'm like, hey, I just wanna learn from you. You're usually going to, like, ask them for something, whether it's for money, for an introduction, or whatever. So, like, the power dynamic is definitely off, and it'd be weird to, like, sit there, like, hey, by the way, now that the pitch is over, like, let me grill you for thirty minutes.

11:09

But In those conversations, what you basically find is, like, they're all very, very curious. Two, is, like, these guys just have, like, brass balls. Right? Like, I don't even know how to describe it other than that. They are willing to just make insane bets at times when other people are not. You know, another person that maybe doesn't get the same fame or recognition as Julian, but I put up there as one of the best investors over the last fifty years is Bill Miller.

11:33

And, you know, Bill, in the late nineties, people were giving him shit because he said he was a value investor, but he started to buy tech stocks. And so, obviously, tech exploded. He was outperforming everybody.

11:45

There's a book that, I recently read where he was the only investor to outperform the S and P five hundred for ten year straight,

11:52

in the nineties. And so everyone was like, you're not a real value investor. And, like, first of all, like, it's stupid to be like, oh, you don't your your results don't count because, like, you didn't do it the way you said you were gonna do it.

12:03

But Amazon was one of his big bets. And so Amazon crashes, like, ninety percent in the dot com crash.

12:10

Bill just backs up the truck and buys more. And I think at one point, he was the single largest outside shareholder of Amazon, and owned like fifteen percent.

12:18

And so you look at that and you're like, okay. One book, you have to, like, find Amazon.

12:22

Two, then you have to, like, not get scared when it drops, like, eighty, ninety percent. And then three is, even if you're not scared, you then have to, like, hold your nose and put way more money in to buy all of this extra, like, equity.

12:34

And so I think that is a common theme. It's just like conviction and and, like, the ability to just bet over and over again regardless of what's happening. And then the last one is, like, these dudes are junkies, man. They're obsessed. I almost think of it like, kind of a gym rat. They not only are curious, but, like, they do the work. And so in that book about Bill Miller, they talk about he, was in Baltimore, and he had, seats behind a home plate for the Baltimore Orioles,

12:58

and he used to bring research report and read them in the stands in between innings.

13:03

And it's just like, like, okay, nerd. Right? Like, like, that's insane.

13:08

But also, like, that's why you end up owning fifteen percent of Amazon is because, like, you did the work. It doesn't happen by accident. And so I think that, like, that's just a great example of all of these folks who have been super successful, those are common themes that they all share.

13:20

That's intimidating, I think. Right? Like, to hear the stories, like, what a what

13:25

When I hear that, I get I I my

13:28

there's no more intimidated phrase than "That's intimidating."

13:31

I think Right?

13:34

I I'm scared. Right, guys?

13:37

No. You're right. And also, I think the hard part is is the the line between genius and idiot is so so thin. It's like, oh, am I Bill Miller backing up the truck? You know, when Amazon crashed ninety percent,

13:49

Or am I just a fucking idiot? Putting all my money into a loser that, like, is showing it's a loser right now. And, you know, that

13:58

you know, the history is told years later. And so I think that's the the hard part is you have to have not just conviction in the investment. You have to have conviction in yourself

14:06

that I despite the market conditions, despite the current

14:10

results right now, I'm able to correctly differentiate between a winner and a loser.

14:16

If you don't have that conviction in yourself, you can't even make you can't even have the conviction in an investment to pull that off. Yeah. You're basically saying I'm smarter than everyone else.

14:24

Right? Like, everyone else is selling this thing. Yeah. And I'm gonna go buy it. And, like, I mean, again, that's why they call them, you know, kinda like the masters of the universe in the hedge fund world. Is, like, the people who end up making a lot of money, they actually seem to be smarter than everyone else. Now how many of those are there? Well, there's way less than the number of people who claim to be, you know, those masters of the universe. And that's, I think, Sean, like, the difference between the fools and the geniuses.

14:48

I'll tell a story that's that's like that. My, my friend was in he's in real estate, and he was around he was making his fortune, early fortune. He was, like, in his mid twenties.

14:59

Two thousand six, two thousand seven, and then two thousand eight happens.

15:02

And he, you know, he's going from zero to, you know, twenty five million dollars in, like, two, three years. Thinks he's, you know, super smart. And two thousand eight happens, and he described it later. He's, like, I he's, like, oh, there was, like, a tunnel

15:15

And,

15:16

everyone was running out. Like, there was a fire on the other side of the tunnel. And, they were running out, and they were like, here. Take this. And I was like, wow. They're just giving me this. This is amazing. This is way. Like, this price is fantastic. He said, I just kept marching forward. And everybody else was running away screaming fire and handing me their their assets on the way out. And,

15:37

yeah, it turns out ran away from the fire because he lost everything in that '08 crash. Now it's that same, you know, the that same feeling would be there. At the dot com crash, everybody's yelling fire, running away, selling things for pennies on the dollar.

15:50

And, you know, the difference, I think, ultimately comes down to

15:54

a, do you, can you can you tell yourself why you were buying something when everybody else is selling? Do you have a belief in this? Right? Like,

16:01

You know, I heard somebody say once to, I had somebody else who made a fortune during the dot com crash,

16:07

and she goes,

16:08

She goes, yeah, it was amazing. Everything was on sale. It was Black Friday. Everything was eighty percent off. I couldn't believe it. The best companies in the world were eighty percent off. And I don't know if they were gonna return back to where they were then, but I just knew these are still the best companies in the world. And, you know, they're now eighty percent off. And and so I, you know, I think that there's there's you hear stories on both sides, and I think you just gotta be careful that,

16:31

you know, you don't wanna be the guy running into the fire, and do you differentiate? I think you have to have, like, some ground truth that you believe that, that you you're willing to stand on. You're willing to lose on. You're willing to look back and say, I'm okay if I'm wrong on this. I'm willing to lose the money I lost if I if it turns out that this this idea was incorrect.

16:48

But when you guys hear those stories, is this, like, one of those things where you're watching a UFC fight and you're a little drunk and you're like, you know, I think I could maybe get a lucky punch and compete. You know what I mean? Or do you guys hear this and you're like, I'm just not in the same league or I don't even want to be know what I mean? Like, do you do you what what's your reaction when you hear those stories?

17:10

I mean, I think it just depends on, like, this, quote, quote, quote, circle of competence.

17:14

Right? You know, if you look back, there's only one time in my life where I've had the conviction, felt like I did the work, and, like, really backed up the truck, and that was the Bitcoin stuff. And Bitcoin had gone from a thousand to twenty thousand in twenty seventeen. It crashed down to, like, thirty two hundred bucks. And I went on National Television, and I was, like, basically, You guys ready. It's like this thing is going to come flying back. We're buying, you know, blah blah blah. Whatever.

17:36

We actually one of my favorite memories has kind of gotten, like, lost in, in the internet archives is we issued a million dollar bet to anyone on Wall Street. And we were like, we'll take Bitcoin. You take any other asset. Like, just pick anything. Over the next ten years, if you beat us, like, you get a million bucks, if Bitcoin outperforms, we get a million bucks, and no one took it. And so at some point, you're just like, okay. That's enough of a signal that, like, people may not have conviction, but they also, like, know the person not to bet against. And I think, like, that's something in UFC is, like, you may look at, like, a card, and you're like, okay. I think I know who's gonna win, like, these five, you know, matches. But that one match, I think I know who's gonna win, but I'm not gonna bet against the other person. So I'm gonna, like, sit that one out. I feel like, a lot of times there's that level of conviction across the market. And so Amazon, you know, people knew it was like a pretty good company, but no one had the conviction to buy. Thing with Bitcoin when it crashed. Like, everyone was like, I think this is interesting, but, like, I don't have the conviction to buy. So, really, it's less of a leap sometimes than than people realize

18:34

But again, I've been doing this now for a decade. There's one time I can think of that I was like, oh, yeah. I think I actually know something. Everyone else does it. Any other time I even tried to think that way, I'm like, I'm probably gonna lose all my money. I should just, you know, sit sit down. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good point. You have to identify that these things shouldn't be, like, Once every month, you have this this grand new conviction bet. It's like

18:56

maybe once in a decade that you you you see something that that is so non consensus, but you believe in.

19:03

It's also hilarious. Did did anybody consider taking you up on that deal? Were they just, like,

19:07

Somebody walked into Tiger. They're like, sir,

19:10

Tony Pompliano

19:11

has has offered a million dollar bet. And they're like, I don't know Tony,

19:17

about all that. Like, did anybody even, like, did it register? Like, why what happened to him? Like, CBC wrote an article about it. Like, it was, like, it was definitely there. Right? But here's the funny part about the whole thing. The people who were, like, were even considering it were, like, all the, like,

19:32

fools that just wanted, like, media coverage So they were, like, trying to come up with these, like, weird,

19:37

you know, aspects of the deal. Like, okay. I'll take your bet, but

19:41

We have to take the return, divide it by two times it by, like, the number of times I jump on my head, you know, and then also I get a multiply and we're just like to you're way too smart for obviously, like, we just wanna straight up bet. If you're a shouldn't have let us know.

19:55

Yeah. Also, they could have perfectly hedged that bet, I think. If they just bought Bitcoin and it addition to making the bet. Right? So, like Yeah. I like to think we issued the bet before the smart people started paying attention. So, like, you know, we we were good or somebody would have figured out how to definitely beat us on. Were you inspired by the Warren Buffett million dollar S and P five hundred bet. Is that the is that what where you you took into Of course. I think that that was one of the smartest things that he's done. Like, buff buffet's interesting because, a lot of the advice that he gives, I think, is, you know, pretty solid, you know, circle of competence being one, you know, kind of value investing. Like, like, all these things that we're kind of talking about here, I I think, very much draws back to Buffet and then, obviously, Graham and Dodd and all these guys. But,

20:36

He also is like a master marketer. Like, Warren Buffett was the original finance influencer.

20:41

Right? And I I've joked a million times that if he was today, Buffet in his thirties, He'd have a sub stack, a Twitter account, a podcast. He'd be streaming on TikTok, like doing all this stuff.

20:50

And so he understood how to, like, leverage the tools he had at the time with the media, And so he didn't need to do it, but a way to really continue to drive, like, the lore of Warren Buffett is, like, issue the bet and say, no hedge fund manager can beat the S and P over, like, a decade or whatever. We just talked about the in the nineties, only Bill Miller did it. Right? So it's very hard.

21:09

There was, like, a period where I remember I was, like, beating myself up even over this podcast where I was like, am I gonna be a content creator or or am I gonna be a business man who actually does the damn thing? And I started reading, you know, I I read a lot of biographies.

21:24

And I actually started thinking about it differently. And you realize that a lot of these great people, whether in business or not, they actually had newsletters.

21:32

And they like, I remember,

21:34

what's the guy's name? Chamath,

21:36

like, recently came out with, like, a newsletter. And I remember they could, like, Why the hell does this guy need to do this? Why is he doing this paid newsletter? But then,

21:44

like Warren Buffett, his annual letters were basically newsletters. I

21:48

mean, he wrote them as such. And then, like, I remember reading about, like, Ben Franklin. Ben Franklin had a newspaper, and he actually wrote constantly about this. I'm reading about George Washington. George Washington constantly wrote editorials, or Bill Ackman does this, you know, where he he's, like, he he's Twitter now, but before that, he had some other things. And I remember thinking, like, No. Actually, like, some of these greats who are great business people also are content producers,

22:12

you know, maybe they're not that's not their income source. But they they really are like wonderful content people. You know what I'm talking about? I I like how you just used content producer. Content producer is is nice. That's that's better than content creator. Which is better than influencer. Actually, I think that's all that we need guys is, like, you just laid out your, like, do I wanna be a content creator, like an influencer or a businessman? And I think we actually just need to be

22:36

content man. Like, I think we need to, like, we just need to level up the phrase so that we don't sound like little bitches when we, Like, oh, I'm I'm a I'm a content creator who tweets all day. It's like, no. No. No. You're a business man. I'm a content man. We're just couple couple of men, couple of producers. Well, I remember one time we had this guest on, and Sean asked this particular guest this particular guest created courses.

22:59

And Sean said something where Sean goes, you know, I create courses too. And sometimes I feel like a fraud because if I'm so good at this, instead of teaching it, I should just go and do it. And I thought that was a really good question. And this question really offended this person, but Sean, you didn't mean it to offend this person. And and so I wasn't I didn't think that they should've been upset, but I also had that same, like, I'm like, well, that's in my fraud. Then you start thinking about it. Well, you know, Warren Buffett actually taught a Dale Carnegie course. He actually also taught a finance course. I forget at which university

23:34

but it's actually common that some of these people are teaching, are creating, and that has kinda helped me, like, feel, like, less you know, like, less embarrassed sometimes about what I do.

23:45

I I think that you can go through tons of entrepreneurs. You can go through tons of

23:50

you know, kind of financial managers.

23:52

This is very, very common. And

23:54

there's a question of if you can't teach it, do you actually understand it? Right? Like, like, it's almost like a flip side to it. But if you really kinda just zoom out, you're like, okay. What is all this content stuff? I I've been there. Right? People would be like, oh, here's a podcast. And I see, like, cringe. It was like somebody, like, stabbed me in the stomach and twisted it when they would introduce me that way. Right? And I'm like,

24:14

you are disrespecting

24:16

all this other work that I did. Say that I have a podcast. Like, yes, I have a podcast, but also, like, I wear shoes. Are you gonna introduce me as, like, oh, pop wear shoes?

24:24

And so I remember,

24:26

going back on my thing about what wait a second. It's it's it's it's like calling,

24:30

milk cat food. You know what I mean?

24:36

Yeah. It's like

24:37

that's not totally fair.

24:40

So what what what what you initially realize is, like, it's just marketing. At the end of the day. Like, it really is just marketing. And, whether it's Twitter, whether it's podcasts, whatever. The people who tend to be good at it, don't think of it, and, like, sit down and, like, create a marketing calendar, like, I know they're like taking a poop and they bought their phone and they start tweeting, like, random things and, like, they go viral. Right?

24:58

At the end of the day, it's just marketing. And so In some weird way, maybe we all shouldn't, like, be ashamed or cringe when people say that stuff. Like, if you're better known for how good you are at marketing, maybe that's actually telling you something. Right? And and so I think it's, we all have that as almost, like, something that eats at us or is, like, an insecurity,

25:17

but

25:18

Whatever. Who cares? Like, if they could do it, they'd do it themselves. Yeah. And to clarify, Sam, I never said fraud.

25:25

Fraud means one thing. I said, I feel like a little bitch when I do courses. And there's a big difference. Fraud means you're misrepresenting yourself. A little bitch

25:30

means

25:34

You're representing yourself as a little bitch, and you have to ask yourself, is that accurate, or is that not accurate?

25:41

And,

25:43

Yeah. That's how I felt sometimes. I felt like a little bit for for doing courses when it's like, should should I be doing something else with my time? This is I like to teach,

25:50

but,

25:52

But maybe maybe that's, like, you know, not the best use of time.

25:56

Sorry. I I paraphrase that incorrectly. I was trying to I I I actually think I made you sound better, but, you know I'd I'd be honest. I'd rather be honest. Okay. Pomp, you brought some ideas for us. You know that this is the idea podcast.

26:08

You brought some ideas. Let's rattle them off. So,

26:12

start with number one. What ideas and trends or opportunities do you see right now in the market?

26:17

Yeah. So this, this first one is one that we're actually doing. So I thought a lot about it. Housing affordability

26:23

is the worst that's been in, this century

26:26

We continue to see people are worried. Like, hey, I wanna buy a house. I should I rent? Should I buy? What are interest rates gonna do? All these different things, but there's no dominant voice in terms of news commentary and data.

26:36

And so we started a company called Resi Club. The idea really, in the beginning, is just go educate people

26:39

about

26:43

what is happening. And so, I'm not an expert on residential real estate. I don't know that many other experts on residential real estate. So we were able to partner up with a gentleman named Lance Lambert,

26:53

Lance was the real estate editor at fortune magazine. So he's, like, coco, legit. Right? He's got seventy five thousand followers on Twitter. A lot of people in the industry all follow him. And we basically just said to him, like, look man, we wanna go build the dominant platform in residential real estate coverage. Why don't we do it together? We know how to scale things. We know how to grow this stuff and monetize you know, the content you are the expert,

27:12

and so let's partner up. And so we've gone ahead. We just got started. It's about two months old.

27:17

And, you know, I love these types of businesses because they kinda look stupid almost in the beginning. They're like, oh, you guys just, like, created a newsletter. Well, yeah, that's exactly what we did. And then it turns into, like, a media site, and then it turns into a data product. And then, like, I don't know. Ten years from now, are we gonna have the information where we can go and seed, like, you know, general contractors in different markets actually build affordable housing, like, maybe. And so you start with this small little thing that you can build profitably,

27:43

and you don't have to raise money or or kinda do anything where there's these, you know, huge expectations.

27:48

But as you grow the business, you can increase your ambition over time. I think a lot of people start with, like, massive ambition, like, let's go to Mars. And, sure, there are some companies where that definitely, makes sense. But for businesses like this, it's just like, hey, there's a problem. Around housing affordability. A lot of people aren't talking about it. We should have more people talking about it. And then we'll figure out how big it can get and how ambitious we can be over time, but we kinda earn the right to go do that. And that's what we're doing. How much did you fund it with?

28:14

Way less than people would think.

28:16

We were profitable within the first month.

28:19

And so we actually wouldn't have even need to put money into the bank account, but I think we put a hundred thousand dollars to get started and never touched it because basically, you know, within the first week, we were profitable. And the market for this is, is it brokers, real estate agents, that wanna pay for this? Or are you looking at investors? Or is it the average person who might be, you know, on Zillow looking for a home?

28:39

Yeah. So the beauty of residential real estate is it's the largest asset class in the world, but none of us who are, like, oh, we're so smart. We're like, business people. We're finance people. We have podcasts. We never think about residential real estate as, like, the largest asset class in the world. We're like, oh, stocks or crypto or bonds or whatever. And so what you end up getting is it's a very niche thing in that it's residential real estate. But it's a very big thing in that it's large asset class in the world. And so what that involves is home builders. It involves real estate agents. It involves people who wanna buy or sell homes. It involves

29:08

people who are doing mortgages, like lenders, etcetera. So there's like huge,

29:12

kind of ecosystem of folks who all need to be aware of what's happening in this industry.

29:17

And so it's one of these great businesses where it's it's, like, small and specific, but also large and broad at the same time.

29:25

And I think you're doing it wise. So I'm looking at your paywall, and you're saying that, like, basically, you get access to a regional housing tracker data, like some type of data set. I think that's smart.

29:37

Who is was it just Lance? Because it looks like Lance is doing all of the writing. Is he also somehow aggregating all of this data as well?

29:45

So Lance is,

29:47

think of him as, like, the editor in chief. Like, like, this guy is lights out. Right? And so as soon as he was, like, interested, I was, like, oh, what do we need to do? How do we, like, run through brick walls to, like, get to work with you? So it's very much like Go find partners that you, like, look up to and wanna learn from, etcetera.

30:03

And he does all the content today. Eventually, there will be an entire team. But I think one of the big lessons that I've learned over the last, you know, five or six years of kind of like playing on the internet and building these businesses is you just don't need that much. And, yes, we have an advantage. I've got a big audience. Right? Lance been doing this for a long time and and really understands how to create content and and kind of write articles and and interview people, etcetera. But at the end of the day, we've now created multiple businesses like this where we start with, like, two or three people, and you can run for six or twelve months and get them profitable with serious cash flow, and then you start to hire a team, sales people, other editorial folks, etcetera. Can I give you a critique?

30:40

Yeah. I think this is awesome. I love the real deal,

30:44

which is the a real estate blog. Your your premium pro plan is a hundred and fifty dollars a year.

30:50

That is so stupid, man. Why aren't you charging way more? It's so hard to do stuff on a hundred and fifty dollars a year.

30:57

Yeah. We we will eventually work. Like, for for sure, we'll increase the price. But if you think about,

31:02

a lot of times, like, even, I'll give you another example. So Berry at times is a,

31:07

of daily news for tech business and finance,

31:10

and started as an email. And when you're building these businesses, you basically have a choice. You can, like, have a high CPM and be okay with not selling out a hundred percent of the ads sometimes, or you can have a lower CPM and just sell out the ads. I tend to always go for, like, let's sell out all of the ad inventory and build the muscle of being able to do it. And you can always raise prices later. Same thing here with the subscription for Resi Club is starting at a hundred and fifty bucks. It's like if you're interested in this and we're actually creating something valuable, There is zero friction for you paying a hundred and fifty bucks a year. Over time, we will increase the price, but that's much better and gives us a better signal. Then let's say we came out with, like, a thousand dollar a year. And people are like, man, this is valuable, but it's not worth a thousand dollars. At least now we know, okay, we have something that people want. It's helpful to them. They're not churning. And now we gotta go and do price discovery over the next twelve months or so. And we'll figure out what that price point is. But I'd rather start with a lower price, make sure we've got the right product and then raise prices later. Like this idea a lot. I think it's a really good idea. This is like a fifty to hundred million dollar win bootstrapped. I think it's gonna be great you know, maybe more, but, like, I think that's a a very realistic outcome from this. But I gotta ask you, you know, it's interesting to see ideas when you're at the end of the IDMA's, meaning, like, you figure out, like, oh, this is the opportunity we should go with. You're a guy who's got a thousand different opportunities, thousand different ideas of what you could go do. Can you walk me through the idea maze? How did you land at this? And, like, what were the kind of, like, other paths that you considered and, you know, like, for example,

32:38

This is residential. Why not commercial? Should it even be real estate or should it be finance? Because actually you have a good foothold of finance. And I'm sure

32:45

we haven't talked about this, but I am sure that there was a little bit of a walk down in IDMA is looking for, oh, wait. What is the real opportunity here? And then it all sorts starts to come together. You get the right operator. You figure out the right idea, the right brand, then you go for it. A hundred percent. So, this one's actually a great one to talk about this because We actually, I would call, like, a false start. We had partnered with somebody else who they were not in residential real estate. The way that they cut the market was by geography. And so they were very focused on South Florida. And so it was like, okay. We think that there's a massive business to build,

33:18

that content first that eventually leads to kind of data products. That is in the real estate market. And when we got started, we didn't know a lot of people. Right? And so I went around and talked to a couple people. I found someone. I said, hey, they do really good work. It was a person I really enjoyed kinda working with and and talking to on a day to day basis. And so we got started, but it was very much like small geography.

33:37

All about South Florida. And then the idea was, like, we'll go to, like, Tampa, and then we'll go to, like, Orlando, and then we'll go to Atlanta, and then we'll, like, just go through these geographies.

33:46

And it didn't work for a whole bunch of different reasons. Probably some of it was our fault. Some of it, was the other person was, you know, very focused on, like, what they wanna to do in terms of the the concept that they had already been creating and and, so we kinda just were like, hey, this isn't that this, like, explosive thing. The market isn't, like, pulling this into existence.

34:04

And so, like, rather than bang our heads against the wall for the next ten years together, like, You had a great thing going before we came along and tried to commit you to do this with us. Like, why don't you just keep doing that thing? I don't wanna, like, you know, hinder your success and your growth. And then we'll, like, go back to the drawing board. And so that's the second attempt was with this resi club. And so you're right that, like, one, there's an idea maze, but also

34:25

I think a lot of people don't realize how often there's false starts to these businesses.

34:30

Nikita Bear, who is, I I think friends of all of ours He's talked about this a bunch with consumer social apps. He's like,

34:37

product market fit is not a single metric. Like, you just know. Right? It's like everything's exploding, and you obviously have product market fit, but in both of the apps, TBH and Gas that he launched and eventually sold to Facebook and then a Discord,

34:49

I think he's publicly described many times. He would launch it. It wouldn't hit. They would go back, like, make a couple changes, like, launch it again. And sometimes he would launch, like, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten times. And then eventually, there was the right combination of all these things that work. And so There's two ways to do entrepreneurship. One is, like, I'm gonna bend the world to my will, and, like, here's the thing that's gonna work regardless of what the market tells me. I'm gonna make it happen. And then there's, like, this iterative approach. And a lot of these things that I work on are much more iterative.

35:18

And so you just have to be really good at, like, go a hundred percent in run the test as perfectly as possible, but be willing to cut bait and try a different combination of, the inputs if for some reason it's not exploding in the way that you want it to. Sean, you gotta tell the Nikita story.

35:33

Which one?

35:35

Just just the the this last one, this last thing that he did. Yeah. He was he was telling us as he was building the app and launching it over and over again and renaming it, like, what was happened. One time they renamed it to one thing, and then it, like, took off in the gay market, He's like, all he did was change the name of the app, and it appealed to, like, you know, only gay people. And then he changed the app name, and it went back, and it it, you know, it changed how the app was going.

35:58

You know, he I think he says something that he's, like, you know, the most important thing for a consumer startup is, like,

36:04

develop a machine that will allow you to launch tests,

36:08

like, real, like high fidelity tests of your product. Like, that is actually your most important product at the beginning, which

36:15

I kind of agree with, but also kinda disagree with. I I think that's a really good way to do the apps he's trying to do, which are, like,

36:23

It doesn't work if it doesn't have a k factor over one. Right? Like, if it's not viral, his apps literally, like, don't work. And then this app was like, I don't really care about retention, long term, anything. Like, it was like, I'm gonna get you in. It's gonna spam invite your friends, and then there's a paywall. And I need, like, two percent of people

36:41

to to buy the in app purchase. And if under two percent of people do it, this doesn't really, like, make a lot of money. But if I can get two percent or more, This thing will make a few million dollars of profit in the next ninety days.

36:51

And,

36:52

you know, so that worked really well for that. But if you go look at how some of the great, like, consumer products are built, They didn't do any of that shit. Like Pinterest it's not like Pinterest was sitting around being like, okay. I need to create a system where I can launch systematically in high schools over and over again until I get this correct. Right? And,

37:07

you know, Facebook and Snapchat. Like, they did eventually figure out a way to, like, roll out and grow. That that they did, but they didn't have this, like, thousand shots on goal with different variations trying to get the virality to be just right. Like, I, like,

37:22

think what Nikita is doing is awesome because it's such a different game than when anybody else really was playing. However,

37:28

you know, his advice is basically, like, how to build a virus not how to create the next, like, you know, social network. And I think people think of him as the genius consumer social network guy, and it's like, no. He's basically built, like, viruses that goes on team team's phones.

37:41

And, you know, like,

37:43

that that he's very, very good at.

37:46

It's like, what are you optimizing for? Right? You know, if you wanna build, the next great social network, like, yeah, k factor matters in the beginning, But, actually, what matters more is, like, what is the thirty, sixty, ninety day retention? If you wanna just, like, go viral and be on every single, you know, fourteen year olds vote in America, then the only thing that matters is k factor. Right? And what do you think of both of his apps? Both of his apps within, I don't know, a hundred days of getting acquired or two hundred days of getting acquired, you know, shut down and read off to zero. Right? Because didn't have retention. But the one thing I would give him a ton of credit for, which I think was really impressive

38:17

was,

38:18

A, he went back to the well. What most people don't do is they do a space. They become super knowledgeable about it. They get so jaded and have so much scar tissue that even though they are the best equipped person in the world to go back and build in that space again, they are so turned off to go become a beginner at something else, which I think is a fine life choice to make from, like, a variety of life, but, like, not optimal from a from, like, playing the game of entrepreneurship.

38:40

The second thing is

38:42

he was in the world of, I'm gonna build a hit hit social app. And the way that a hit social app works is, like, get a hundred million plus users, and then start to make money on ads. And, like, raise venture capital, do all this. When he went back the second time,

38:56

He, like, broke down the fourth wall of Silicon Valley. It was like, what if I don't fund this and what if I just, like, charge a little bit of money? And, like, what if I just make a few million dollars of profit, like, every every month?

39:08

And, like, I don't know how long it'll last, but I think I can make, like, whatever. You know, it was, like, five million bucks in the in the summer. That sounds pretty awesome. Let me try to do that. And nobody, nobody in consumer, so, like, the mobile gaming guys were, like, yeah, of course. Like, get a bunch of downloads and then charge, like, you know, a small amount and see if you can, make, you know, your key metric is ARPU. But, like, the cons the the mobile gaming guys don't build social apps. The social apps guys don't build mobile games. The those guys don't build enterprise sales. Like, people very rarely are able to, like, rethink

39:38

the rules of their game. And he rethought the rules of the consumer social game and was like, I'm gonna build a consumer social app, but it's gonna have the monetization

39:47

of a mobile game. And I think in,

39:50

basically, like, a six month span, it made, like, seven or eight million dollars in in, you know, gross revenue with, like, you

39:56

know,

39:57

and it, you know, it was very profitable for him in that period of time that he sold the thing. And the the, you know, that that is a very impressive way to, like, Most people can't do that. Most people can't rewrite the rules of the of their industry, of their game. There's two things that you maybe think of. The first is there's a whole group of these people who are, like, trying to rewrite the rules or think about differently.

40:15

One of my favorite examples, and I don't wanna share who it is

40:17

because I don't know if they're they're okay with it, but, they created, like, a ability to make photos in your Instagram story

40:24

blurry.

40:25

And, basically, you would have to pay on Apple Pay to, like, unblur the photo. So, obviously, like, all the only fan girls would put it on their Instagram story And it'd be, like, just blurry enough where people are, like, oh, that looks like something I might really like looking at. And then they would they'd pay, like, two dollars, five dollars, ten dollars, like, whatever it was set at. And so you're, like, bootstrapping off of these massive audiences these people already have, but it's, like, a little feature, and they don't raise money for it. It's just, like, much money can we generate as quickly as possible? And, I mean, they make a lot of money. Right? And and so it works. So it is possible. Speaking of, folks who go back to the well, you guys know who Brad Jacobs is?

41:02

Yeah. He created, like, six billion dollar companies now or something like that. He's the guy. He's the goat. We're I'm trying to I I've been trying to get him on the pod. I've been trying I I can't I can't He's got a book coming out. He'll he'll definitely come on. He's got a book coming out. So he's one hundred percent going on. I can't get in touch with him. We'll we'll talk but he's one hundred percent going on everyone's podcast because he's got a book coming out, which is, like, the best time to get these guys. But, so about four or five years ago, somebody, like, almost like, like a back alley drug deal. It was like, check out Brad Jacobs. And I was like, never heard of him. Like, who's that? Gone on Wikipedia?

41:33

And literally for a week and a half, like, didn't sleep was just, like, all over scouring the internet trying to figure out, like, what obscure podcasts did this guy do? Because he

41:43

just did it over and over and over again. And what he essentially does is he just does roll ups. Like Wayne Hyzinga is another guy who's, like, famous for doing this.

41:51

And what Brad did,

41:54

is just figure out a business model, figure out a funding mechanism,

41:57

start winning, and then go around and tell everyone, like, hey, I'm gonna do the same playbook,

42:01

and I'm gonna win again. And then people gave him money. So explain what he did. So one of the things that they did was in the waste industry, which also I think Wayne Heisinga had a had a big one as well. In the waste industry, basically, they would go and and where he started was he didn't go to major markets didn't even go to, like, what he calls, like, secondary markets. He basically went to, like, podunk towns. It was like, I'm gonna buy the landfill.

42:21

And then once he bought the landfill, he was like, okay. There's, like, seven companies that all pick up trash in the surrounding area they bring to this landfill. And he would just, like, would start, like, smipering off each one of them. He'd buy the first one. They'd buy the second one. The third one. And eventually, he owned all seven of the companies plus the landfill. And so he just did this across the country and he would roll it all up. That one, was like, I

42:41

think early nineties. It was called United Waste Systems.

42:45

And so he took that company public, and it ended up being like a multi billion dollar outcome. He's done that same thing, like, six or seven times now. And so you're just like, okay. Building a billion dollar company is cool. Building two, you're like, damn. Like, you you've got the the golden touch. If you do more than five, there's, like, one of you. Right. I think he's done it with, so he did the Waste

43:06

Manager manifesting, then he did united rentals, which was, like, renting, heavy, like, dump trucks

43:14

and and porta potties and bobcats and things like that. Then he did it with Exo Logistics, I think, which is currently public XPO, which is currently, a public and traded

43:21

company.

43:24

And I think he did it two or three other times. I mean, he's done it many, many times. I think his book is called how to make a billion dollars,

43:31

or something like that. Like, it's it's a pretty It's a pretty baller title. It's like and if you could Coming on my first million,

43:37

look quite literally beneath me.

43:40

Wanna know something funny about,

43:42

about how he describes himself. He's like, you know, I'm a career CEO, serial entrepreneur. Like, he is very much, like, what you would expect from a guy who's built multiple billion dollar companies. If you Google his name,

43:51

you know, on LinkedIn, how there is, like,

43:54

a, like, a preview of the website.

43:57

On LinkedIn, it says Brad Jacobs is an influencer.

44:00

Because I think he has, like, the influencer,

44:02

like, categorization

44:03

on LinkedIn, and they just, like, auto fill it. But it's, like, the classic imagine telling Brad Jacobs, like, ah, you're not really, like, a multi billion dollar entrepreneur. You're just an influencer. He would, like, blow a gasket. Yeah. That's so true. It that's what it says. First top link on Google. Brad Jacobs is an influencer, period.

44:20

Got him. Like, stop the disrespecting that man.

44:23

The reason he's cool is, like, okay. So he lives in Grange, Connecticut. He wears, like, a suit and tie most of the time. He's he's he looks like a he looks like a suit. And I'm sure he's very professional and a wonderful CEO, but if you actually, like, listen to some of the things he says, he's way more of a, he's way more entrepreneurial than, like,

44:41

his picture looks. You know what I mean? Like, he he's got that he's got that artist vibe a little bit.

44:46

The the guy's the guy's special. He's very fascinating. But before his book came out and or is coming out, he's been really under the radar for how successful he is. He's a really fascinating

44:56

person. Yeah. The the, one of my favorite activities is, like, if you ever reading an article, like, Bloomberg does this a lot and,

45:03

actually, the Financial Times, They'll, like, randomly talk about these, like, really wealthy people, and I'll just immediately, you know, copy paste, Google, like, hey, who is this person?

45:12

And,

45:13

recently, I did it. And, let me see if I could find this guy's name real quick because

45:18

it was, like, one of these things where, as soon as this you go down the rabbit hole, you're like, wow. This is like a whole different game.

45:27

What is this dude's name? Oh, here you go. Benny Steinmetz?

45:30

So they call him an Israeli tycoon,

45:33

but he, like, got into a bunch of trouble and there was, like, fraud. And I think he maybe even got arrested, etcetera. But, like, he's in the commodities game. And you're like, I've never heard of Benny Steinets.

45:43

He sounds like he's built some massive companies.

45:46

But also in the commodities game, like, sometimes there's gold in the mine, and other times there's a promise of gold in the mine, you know, type thing. And so you're just, like,

45:56

How many of these people are out there that are not on the internet or not well known in the, like, internet circle?

46:02

And sure. You can go look at the forms hundred, you can go look at, like, all these lists that people put together. There's way more people that are completely unknown than I think known And so it does kinda remind you, like, you don't you only gotta be right once or twice. And you can achieve

46:17

immense amount of wealth or success. By doing just like the basic things,

46:23

go buy assets that end up being valuable. If you Google this guy, he looks like one of these guys that could, like, find a pressure point on your neck that makes you, like, collapse.

46:32

He looks he looks

46:34

he looks very legitimately like a killer and I've researched him as well. He was in the IDF. So, like, he's a trained military guy. And if you Google him, he looks scary. He looks like he'll he'll wait to sleep.

46:46

What other ideas, are interesting to you at the moment? So, I'll give you a couple of categories. There's one that I the best name I had for it is, like, persistent patrol companies.

46:55

So if you think about one of the big problems that city, states, and the national government's gonna have is, like, they have to get more money. They're broke. Right? And if you're broke, you either, like, cut your costs as much as possible, or you go make more money. They're not gonna cut costs. They gotta make more money. One of the best examples is in New York City, the congestion tax. That's one of the few taxes that I'm on board with. You're on board. Okay. Alright. Let me explain what it is first, and then and then we can debate.

47:19

The way it works is, like, I don't know, nine to five, Monday through Friday. If you drive from, like, outside

47:25

of lower Manhattan

47:27

into lower Manhattan, they charge you, like, twenty bucks. Like, it's a pretty large tax. Every single day. So it only is charged one time, but you can imagine all the cars that are driving from above fifty ninth street, below fifty ninth street, between nine to five, Monday through Friday, and they're gonna hit with this twenty dollar tax. It's a way for the city to raise more money, get more income. It's called a congestion taxes. First one of the United States, but this has been happening in Europe and other places for quite a while. So it's not a new concept. It's just new to America.

47:54

They're also considering charging,

47:57

people, like, a thousand dollars a month or something really high in order to own are in the city? There's all kinds of ideas because it all comes back to this thing. Like, they need more money. Right? They're they're broke. And

48:08

Over the last couple of years in cities like New York, people who were paying a lot in taxes, they left. Like, there's that infamous story of David Tepper. He was in New Jersey, he was responsible for three percent of the state's budget in the the taxes he personally paid, and he moved to Florida. And there's all these articles that were, like, the state of New Jersey is gonna go broke because David Tepper is moving.

48:27

And so I think it was for, like, some sort of, family medical situation. He moved for a couple years When he moved back, the way the story goes is that he called up the state treasurer

48:36

and was like, yo, you got a hundred and twenty million coming to you next year, like, put into your budget.

48:42

I'm back there. Right. So, like, wealthy people

48:44

yeah. It's and it's New Jersey. It's not like it's like North Dakota. Right? It's like the state of New Jersey was dependent on this guy for material percentage of, of of their state budget.

48:54

So lots of people have been moving. So my idea is, like, Well, how are they going to get more revenue? Right now, a lot of revenue is derived from, like, parking tickets or, like, stupid things where they have humans walking around, trying to, like, catch people doing these be doing. So I think there's gonna be an entire rise of businesses that just use computer vision to do the same thing. Like, anything that can be automated will be automated rather than have humans with their lazy eyes walking around, just have computers that constantly monitor it. So parking tickets is an easy one. Fire Marshall, Like, how many times have you gone to an event? And it's like, you know, Fire Marshall says two hundred and twenty people can be here. You're like, I think there's a thousand people in this room right now. Right?

49:32

So, like, they can just automate, okay, you hit with a five hundred dollar fine every single time at this event venue, etcetera.

49:38

Elevators. Like, you can just go through and see over and over again that computer vision will just become like the persistent eye. It's scary. Like, I don't like the idea of this, but I do think someone's gonna build technology and it's not gonna be the government. And so we're likely to see a huge rise of these businesses that use what is pretty, like, standard technology at this point. Just, like, count the number of humans walking into a building and stay on top of it so that the government can generate more of it. Well, there's also, like, in LA. Don't they have the mansion tax? Right? Like, it's like, oh, if you sell a home for more than five million dollars, there's just like, here's a new tax. And, they're like, what what are these people doing? New York has it too. Live in small homes.

50:16

Like, they they'll never do it. They'll never downsize. Like, we got them. We could charge literally anything we want, and they're still gonna pay it. You know, I I I kind of agree with you that that getting this revenue streams could be gonna be important. Obviously, I hate the idea of the, like, persistent patrol computers basically finding you for for taking every misstep. But,

50:36

I think you're you're the the root thing you're talking about, like, how do you help governments

50:40

make more money is gonna be a business opportunity because you're right. They,

50:44

they do need it. There's a competition

50:46

right now between, taxes,

50:49

and tipping?

50:50

Like, when you go to the coffee shop, there's literally going to be a competition between is on the bill if it's itemized.

50:57

Does the government get more money out of the bill or does the tipping? Because we've become this, like, tipping society where somebody, like, pours a coffee and they're like, that'll be fifteen percent on top of the bill. And so if the government continues to increase sales tax, like, very much, these bills are gonna get inflated

51:12

because it's just everyone's got more hands in the cookie jar.

51:16

So, Sean, New York has a,

51:18

mansion's tax. Do you wanna know what the threshold is in order to pay it? No. What is it? Alright. So keep in mind, I think the average sale of a New York home is, like, eight hundred thousand.

51:28

The mansion tax starts at a million dollars.

51:31

So, basically So, like, you have a second. Bedroom,

51:34

mansion.

51:35

Yeah. So their mansion tax I I think it's close to four percent. It ranges, I think, but I think it goes up to four percent. So, basically, if you purchase

51:44

a two bedroom apartment in New York City, you basically have to say, alright, here's an additional forty thousand just for buying or is it for selling? I don't remember which one, but someone pays roughly twenty, thirty, forty thousand dollars. For a two bedroom apartment that and so they have it as well in New York City. It's pretty wild. I mean, that's, like, a five thousand dollar mortgage payment. Right? Like, if you're like, hey, I don't wanna pay seven, eight thousand dollars for a two bedroom. I'm an incident by, and I'm gonna have to pay forty five hundred or five thousand dollars with eight percent interest rates on my mortgage. A million bucks. Like, yeah, that you're getting hit with the mansion tax. It's pretty wild. But, yeah, New York has that. New York gets you in in so many different ways. It's a very challenging place to live because of that. You live in here. Right? I do live in New York. Like, what will it take for you to move, basically?

52:30

Nothing. Like, at this point, I'm not gonna move.

52:33

I moved,

52:34

and I think that I've come to the realization that I'm willing to pay for the experience.

52:39

Like, yes, the taxes are higher. But I feel like the money that I give on those higher taxes is very much,

52:46

in exchange for the density of New York City, the experience, like,

52:50

all of that. And so,

52:52

to some degree, it's, like, the biggest expense I pay every year, but it's because of the quality of life,

52:57

or a specific type of quality of life that I want. And so I just come to, you know, terms with it and, like, you know, struck the check every year. And compared to other cities, New York does a half decent job of

53:08

like, making it feel like you're you're getting what you paid for. You know, you've got good parks, subway system, whatever.

53:13

But, damn, it's still challenging. Particularly, I mean, you were in Florida for a while. I'm at the moment. When I'm thinking about going to New York, I'm like,

53:20

Golly, this changes the math a lot. The math changes at a significant amount. Yeah. Just close your eyes. It don't look.

53:28

Yeah. I'm

53:31

Alright. I got one I got one more idea before we go, which is AI agents. I don't know. I sent you guys the link, but this kid I don't know this guy. Jacob Greenfield. We love this we love him. I don't know him either, but he posts amazing stuff. He he immediately is awesome in my book because he posted this yesterday, and I was thinking, like, what we could talk about today.

53:49

And he basically used these AI agents, which, like, That's all I know about them is they're called AI agents.

53:55

But they, like, go and do these jobs. And so he was, like, alright, I'm gonna go have an AI agent that finds opportunities

54:01

And I'm going to score the opportunities based on, like, how much money could I make and how difficult would it be to execute. And he basically populated this whole list. And then he's like, but,

54:11

gonna create a second AI agent that then goes and looks at all of the opportunities that are high earning potential, low difficulty,

54:18

And I'm gonna have them create a plan on how I could actually execute

54:22

to do that thing. And then she's probably gonna create, like, a third AI agent and be like, and then I'm gonna have them carry out the plans from AI agent number two. But it's just, like, again, yes, you have to be technical to be able to figure some of this stuff out or or work with technical people. But the world is changing at a very rapid pace. And what we're seeing is everyone was worried about, like, the blue collar worker was gonna get automated away. Like, damn. It sounds like Jacob is automating away my first million, but all of a sudden, no one has listened to the podcast. They're just gonna get a, like, sell sheet with, like, do I get rich without doing a lot of work and and go do those opportunities? Right? So so it's cool to see, but, I I do think that there's a lot of things that people are gonna figure out here. Of just, like, how to find better opportunities without having to spend, you know, thousands of hours doing the research.

55:07

This is awesome. This tweet is awesome. I'm looking at it now. This is very good. They are awesome, but also, like, like, okay. I I like the I think it's like one of these things where, like, the demo shows you what's possible, but the demo

55:19

is not, like, usable.

55:21

In the I feel like, you know, the same way kind of about VR right now, like, every time I buy the new VR, I buy the new VR every time it comes out. And then I put it on and I'm like, holy shit. This is amazing. I can't wait to show five other people this. And then I'm gonna put it on the shelf and not touch it for a year, like, but it it soon this will be, like, this will be it'll it'll solve all the pain points. Like,

55:40

you know, used to have to be tethered to a computer. Now you don't. It used to be where it was really hot and sweaty in there. Now it's not. Used to not be able to see the room when you're there. Now you could see through. You could see the room. Like, they're improving it one step at a time. Like, for example, the things on this list are,

55:56

you know, like, clean energy solutions for shipping, innovating fuel alternatives.

56:01

Like, okay. Yeah.

56:03

Yep.

56:04

Sure. Money maker. No. Battery that lasts forever. Yeah. Cool. Yeah.

56:08

I got you. Mom, why isn't real estate blog on here?

56:13

Not enough money and way too difficult.

56:17

Where's real estate blog? It didn't make the top thirty. So I think the idea of this is really cool, but, you know, it practice. Like, if you if somebody sat down, it was like, great. I'm gonna do that thing. I'm gonna go use that thing to make it happen. I I don't think any of it's like usable at this point. I will give you one example that I think is usable.

56:32

So,

56:34

I think somebody could do this right now. I think, you know, somebody who wants to play a different game could go play this game. Upwork has, like,

56:41

I don't know,

56:42

three or four billion dollars of GMV every year of people basically paying for tasks that get done and up.

56:48

And,

56:49

I'm pretty sure a huge number of abort tasks and fiber tasks

56:54

are

56:55

automatable right now, or, like, Maybe they're not a hundred percent automated, but, like, you could take that same person, use, you know, use AI, use use,

57:05

you use technology in order to be like ten x your output, five x your output. So you get just like better leverage, operational leverage.

57:12

I think if somebody combined

57:14

private equity and AI, you could go roll up and buy the top profiles

57:19

on Upwork and Fiverr. So you basically buy the search juice that these guys have so that they're gonna get the top, like, you know, logo design. They're gonna go get the top jobs because you're the number one rank because you were there since twenty thirteen on fiber or whatever.

57:33

And I think you could go buy all of those, and then you could put them all under one roof and be like, that's wild. We're gonna use AI to fulfill a huge number of these.

57:41

And you can make a lot of money because those little properties on top of fiber, on top of Upwork, those are valuable rental properties essentially. They go get income every month, but now you have a way to get more margin out of that rental. So I think already you could buy them at a good price because nobody else is really buying those. But on top of that, you could probably get some more operational leverage out of it. This was the whole idea that, like, Thracio and other Amazon aggregators had, was they were gonna, like, go buy up a bunch of Amazon stores. And, I know somebody who financed a lot of them, and his thesis was like, if you're the first search result for a very popular product, that is, like, real estate. And so it's, like, location location location. Like, you are the first search result, and so you'll constantly get traffic. Obviously, there's platform risk if there's some sort of algorithm change or whatever, but they're able to kinda model that risk.

58:27

The hard part is, like, you're dealing in physical goods in on Amazon. And what you're talking about is, like, you're basically just dealing software. And so there is one hundred percent, somebody,

58:37

some obscure place in the world who is, like, the best fiverr logo designer right

58:42

now, And they are just, like, a mid journey, like, power user.

58:46

Right? And so it's, like, okay.

58:49

I used to be able to design x number of logos per month. Now I can do one hundred x that. And, oh, you wanna give me feedback? No problem. I'll just change the prompt. To make it exactly what you want. And I can do it in, you know, one one hundredth at a time.

59:05

Yeah. Like, that sounds awesome to that person. And, frankly, like, that's how the world should work. Like, you should pay the same for the results. You're buying the result, not the amount of work. And, like, that person after having figured out how to do it is going to be financially rewarded Like, we want that financial or economic system to be exactly how business works. Do you, of all these companies that you're working on, how

59:27

much time, are you allocating to each one? How how many businesses do you have now?

59:32

I don't know how many, but let's just call, like, around ten.

59:35

59:38

I think of it, kind of a, like, a, a two by two matrix to some degree. There are some businesses that are young and need lots of time. And then there are, a lot of companies that are older and don't need as much time. The only thing that changes between those two things is,

59:53

like, fires.

59:55

Right? So it's like if you look at my day, it is mostly distributed to the companies that are just getting off the ground. We're trying to figure out how to build momentum. We're trying profitability. We're trying to, like, figure out the first couple of hires. We're trying to, like, make sure we got the product correct, like, all those types of things. And then,

01:00:09

maybe try twenty percent, fifteen percent of my day is like, oh, we just lost a big customer or there's some, like, fire to put out with one of the companies that's already pretty mature. But after the first, I don't know, six months, like, the company works or it doesn't. And if it works, then, actually, I'm probably doing the company a disservice if I'm, like, still meddling in,

01:00:28

the day to day, like, decision making and leadership of the business. We have somebody who runs the company. Like, they should be the ones to sink or swim. And I think they appreciate the autonomy to just go do it themselves without, you know, having me, like, micromanage them over their shoulder.

01:00:41

The only thing that I do do is every week I get a weekly update.

01:00:45

And, frankly, like, I read them. You know, I I give a little bit of feedback here and there, but it's more so for the people who run the company,

01:00:51

because it forces them just to write down, you know, what do we get done this week? And no one including myself ever wants to send an update. It's like, we had nothing done. So, that's really the only thing that's, like, persistent week and week out regardless of the, the the age of the business. How are you balancing the two things of a, like, buy versus build? So I think Shaan and Andrew Wilkinson they're

01:01:11

toying around the idea of buying parts of companies or wholly only owning companies that they buy as well as focus

01:01:18

of, well, these one or two things could have outsized returns. I should only do those.

01:01:23

Yeah.

01:01:24

So buying first build is, like, really interesting. I've gone back and

01:01:27

forth. Over the years. Like, we've bought a couple of businesses, not a lot, but but a few. And we've obviously built a number of them. And, you know, there's a sector right now that I'm looking at It's in the media space. It's a very specific type of audience. I think that it's kind of a unique thing. I'm I'm not usually big on, like,

01:01:42

ideas are valuable.

01:01:44

This to me is just like we understand something about an audience that most other people haven't yet discovered. And so we think that it could be interesting to go after. There's two players in the market that are well known in that industry.

01:01:55

Again, it's a a niche, but also, like, very big.

01:01:58

And both players, you'd probably have to pay, like, over a hundred million dollars to buy them in in kind of total cost, and you probably can't buy a minority

01:02:05

stake. And so it's, like, at this point, given our track record, I probably could go try to figure out, you know, a bunch of these, like, big institutional investors who wanna buy media businesses and, like, go put it together It's a lot of work. You have to convince someone to sell it to you. You have to get the terms, right, integration, like, like, there's a lot of challenges.

01:02:22

But then I'm like, Did I think for a hundred grand, we could create a competitor, and, like, it's not gonna be worth a hundred million dollars, you know, within the first two or three years. But, like, could we, like, take a big dent into their businesses, probably.

01:02:35

So when it's that skewed, I obviously tend to lean towards building versus buying. I think where it's harder is, like, hey, the business is worth, like, ten million dollars or five million dollars. And you're, like, that's, like, two years of progress.

01:02:49

Versus

01:02:51

not spending the money upfront and, like, maybe you get there, that's where I probably lean much more towards, like, buying first building. It's just, like, it's it's a lower risk and the deals easier to get done than trying to go and, you know, buy these these huge things that, you know, frankly, there's only so many people in the world that are actually good at doing. And what about the focus thing? I mean, I only do one thing. I I remember your face seared in my brain last time you asked me this. And I was like, no. I don't do a lot of things. I do one provide capital and distribution to businesses.

01:03:19

I think that's I think that's inspiring. I think that Sean and I fall on different sides. I actually think Sean, I'm slowly

01:03:27

buying in to other viewpoints.

01:03:30

Oh, shit. I'm trying to go over to where you're at. I'm trying to focus more. Sam has hold on a second. This is a lie. Sam, you have multiple businesses.

01:03:37

Like, you're not just doing one thing. Although you think of, like, I don't know, Airbnb short term rental,

01:03:42

right, like, you built that out. Like, that's a project that you were working on. Right? At the same time, you were getting Hampton off the ground. Right? Like, like, there's all these things where sometimes it's not, like, okay. I'm gonna raise money and go build this big business. It could just be, like, projects, but you're you're constantly doing multiple things. I call them hobbies, but I I I have a forty hour a week thing, which is actually

01:04:05

So I'm disproving my my own point. It's actually podcasting in Hampton.

01:04:10

But so that doesn't exactly make point, but that's, like, my nine to five. And then, like, I've I've got, like, weekend projects is how I consider it.

01:04:17

So meet Sampar, He's a podcaster

01:04:20

with weekend hobbies.

01:04:23

A guest influencer, content man.

01:04:26

Producer.

01:04:27

Content producer. I think I think I think we've got a really good job of rebranding that. Creator just sounds

01:04:32

weak. For some reason. There's a bunch of people chasing their,

01:04:35

ex bios right now. They're like, just deleting creator and putting producer.

01:04:42

Yeah. It's just for some reason, it's a weak that's a weak that's a weak,

01:04:46

word. I I don't know what it is, but we do need to rebrand that. Well, just it bolts you in with everybody else. That's the problem. Like, it's like, oh, no. I'm I'm not like them. No. No. That that guy's just unemployed.

01:04:57

There there's a difference, you know.

01:05:00

I'm I'm a different thing. I need to have a new name. I met a guy who, he was one of the early hires at Palantier, and, he he essentially, like, I don't know, didn't tell me this, but, like, I think he was, like, basically the COO, right, or or whatever in the early days. And he was, like, yeah, one of the cool things about the culture is, like, You kinda, like, jointly with your boss made up your title.

01:05:18

And so his was, like, risk identifier and destroyer.

01:05:25

Right? And it's just like, man, names do matter. Like, what does that guy do? I wanna go work at the company where, like, that could be my title. And it's very clear inside the organization.

01:05:33

What the president does at different companies may be different, but the guy whose title is, like, risk identifier and destroyer is one hundred percent focused on risk. And so, same thing. Like, content creator, like, maybe it's the wrong name and just change the name and then all of a sudden everyone's really excited about it. Shamath has a good story about this. He says when he was at Facebook, they were trying to hire, like, you know, some PhD level,

01:05:54

you know, math and stats guy, and they were like, cool. Like, you can come be a data analyst. He's I don't wanna be a data analyst. I'm gonna go get my PhD instead.

01:06:01

He's like, I don't know. Does I say data scientist?

01:06:04

Where you have a new field called data science.

01:06:07

And you're one of the first to be a data scientist on earth. And he's like, yeah, I invented the tag data science. And then now it's like, you know, a whole, like, prestigious job title in Silicon Valley is to is data science. Is that story true? That's that's a that's a hard story to believe. Is you think that's true? Yeah. I believe it. I don't know. I have no reason not to believe it.

01:06:26

I did. I I love those guys so much on the all in podcast, but I was laughing

01:06:31

that people are giving them shit about the, using scaramucci as the measuring stick. Do you guys see this? Yeah. No. What's that? Like, Scare scaramucci was the White House,

01:06:41

communications director for what he's, I think. Right? I mean, like, the infamous photo he's got the sunglasses on with the finger guns. Like, probably one of the the greatest stints in the White House of all time.

01:06:50

And, so people will always tweet at scaramucci. Like, when, you know, emmit Sheer was the CEO of Open AI for, like, forty eight hours. They're like, hey. How many scaramucci's did he last? Scareamushi will, like, calculate it, like, you know, point two or whatever.

01:07:04

So the all in guys, they had been saying it for a while, and they were like, yeah. We invented that. They were they were like, on Twitter. They're like, give us credit if you're gonna use it. And, and then, you know, the

01:07:15

the the internet loves to hate on those guys. If you're not in, like, the tech industry, they were, like, waiting for them to say something. And, of course, they all started pulling up, like, articles and whatever. And, like, man, this is, like, peak Internet, right, is, like, Somebody wants credit for a term that no one's really clear where it came from. And then a bunch of people who don't like that person is wants to critique them and yell and scream and, like, go do a bunch of work.

01:07:36

To disprove them. I was like, we are all wasting our time. We should just get off the internet, like, go do productive things. But, It's kinda like when I when when I say MFM,

01:07:45

we get credit for making Andrew Huberman and Brian Johnson famous.

01:07:49

The longevity guy according to us.

01:07:52

Yeah. You're a welcome world. I actually think that Kim Kardashian's famous because of you guys. I didn't wanna get to be better early on.

01:07:59

Yeah. It's like you ever heard of Rob Bearddick?

01:08:01

Well, the first one to watch her work. I think, yeah, it's great.

01:08:07

Pam, thanks for doing this, man. We love hanging out with

01:08:10

you. Absolutely. I appreciate you guys very much. Can I plug one thing before I leave? Yeah. Yeah. We have a job board. It's called dream startup job dot com used to be called Pop Crypto Jobs. It was just crypto. We've now expanded it to be crypto and everything else. We've helped three people a day on average. For now over two years, get a new job.

01:08:28

And so there's ten thousand open roles on there. If you wanna get a job at your dream startup, you should go to dream startup job dot com and, and check it out. Alright. Appreciate it. Looks good.

01:08:38

I I I remember what it used to be. I think this is a this is a smart move. Well, we'll figure it out. I appreciate you, fells. Good to see you, man.

01:08:45

That's the pod.

00:00 01:09:07