00:00
And you said,
00:01
you you'd wanna invest your own money in this. That's what you said here. Yeah. I I I would love if anyone wants to do this, I will hundred percent invest. So please email me But this is one of those things where, like
00:13
Yeah. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to.
00:18
I put my all in it like days off on a road less traveled, never looking back. Alright, everyone. We have a special episode with Andrew Wilkinson. Andrew Wilkins started this company called Metalab, which grew to make tens of millions of dollars and using the profits from his agency,
00:33
Metalab, he eventually bought
00:35
dozens of more companies. So he's collectively as companies do hundreds of millions of dollars a year in sales and have created over a billion dollars worth of value. So he's, seen a lot of interesting stuff And in today's episode, we talk about
00:47
an incredibly success successful business person that he looks up to. It's our segment called Billy of the week. And then we talk about some of the ideas that
00:55
he has for studying growing companies. He currently launched a local news business. So it's kinda like my company, the hustle, but for different cities, it's very fascinating. I've I'm asking him if I can join as an advisor, and he started a few more things and or wants to start more stuff. And he's even said that if you are starting these companies to holler at him because he wants to invest. So give it a listen. And by the way, if you're in Miami, Sean and I, on June fourth, they're gonna be in Miami. We're doing Austin on June third, but that's already sold out. But June fourth, we have room for up to four hundred people. I think already two hundred people have RSVP. It's free.
01:30
Go to my Twitter handle, thus, Sampar, and scroll down. You'll see the event eventbrite link. It's totally free. June fourth, it's Friday.
01:38
Come. And, by the way, we've been working our ass off to make content for you, just for you.
01:45
Can you do me a favor click subscribe in iTunes,
01:48
and
01:50
click follow on Spotify. When you do that, we go higher up in the charts, which means more people can see us which means we get more views. And if we get more views, we can keep doing this more and more and more because we're, making some more money from it and we're able to dedicate more time to So please, I work my butt off for you. Just click subscribe
02:08
and click follow on Spotify and subscribe in iTunes. I appreciate it. Hope you enjoy the episode. Andrew, what's going on, dude? Hey, man. How you doing?
02:17
I got a really bad, a really bad cold. I spent all day yesterday with Kleenex up my nose. So, if my voice sounds a little froggy, that's why.
02:25
It only sounds froggy because you said it sounded froggy. I think you're okay.
02:29
So Andrew Wilkinson,
02:31
good friend of mine, good friend of the pod.
02:34
Is this description that I used three or four weeks ago the same description? Is that is that same thing. Are you are you wearing that same personality? Is that the same life or have you done something new and amazing? Because you're always are pulling something out of your sleeve.
02:45
Yeah, I've got I I think since then, I've launched a couple businesses actually, but no, the description's still accurate.
02:52
And so we're gonna talk about a couple things. The first thing we're gonna talk about is
02:56
Well, you had a a bunch of ideas here. I'm excited for the ideas, but I wanna talk about the end of the week because we talked about two people
03:03
last time you were here, and that was
03:06
It's right next to the Biology episode. That's the most listened episode ever.
03:11
Really? No way. Which which episode was that? The bill the one where we did the two billies of the week.
03:16
Yeah. Something like, I think almost fifty thousand people listen to it, which is like it's an hour long thing. It's a lot of time. Crazy.
03:24
And then the third most listened thing was the one we did after that. So,
03:28
you know, it could just be Okay.
03:30
Yeah. Move aside,
03:32
move aside Sean.
03:33
Yeah. So it's like biology is like, whatever it is, you're, like, within hundreds or, like, a thousand of it, and then you're the next two. And so that's why I think we'll start off one. But you sent me. I yesterday, I asked you to tell me an interesting person, and I'm gonna go do a ton of research on them. And I did.
03:48
And I have a feeling you already know a lot about this person. But what's What's his person's name?
03:53
So his name is, I don't know how to say it. I think it's Jorge
03:56
Georgier.
03:57
It's a Brazilian name.
04:01
Oh, there you go. Okay. Can you say his name, please? And every time we need to say his name, we'll just say it for you. I'll say his first name. His last name is German, so I don't know if there's a right way of saying it, but his first name is Joshi Pablo. And then Like, they,
04:14
Paulo is his considered his first name as well. Because in a lot of the articles I read about them, they call them a majority. Sorry. Georgier Paulo.
04:21
It might be his middle Paula might be his middle name or it might be, like, a double first name. I'm not sure. But
04:30
This guy's totally mysterious. He doesn't like to talk about what he does. There's only a few interviews with him online.
04:37
But he basically I mean, if you think about the businesses that he owns,
04:42
you would know them. So Burger King,
04:45
Budweiser,
04:47
Tim Hortons,
04:48
craft foods, Popeyes,
04:50
Heinz ketchup. Right? So he basically goes out he finds these amazing, you know, multi generational businesses that have been around for fifty plus years that do something very, very simple. It's just gonna grow over time. It goes out. He usually raises a ton of debt, and then he goes and buys them and takes them over. And he's been doing this for I don't know, forty years or something like that. Starting himself. Let's give a little bit of background of him. So how old is he? He's about seventy five years old. Right?
05:20
And he's based out of Brazil. He's a a Brazilian guy. And when he started at the time, I don't think that there were these, like, Brazilian tycoons. You know, every article that I read about, they said that he was one of the first folks in in Brazil to become one of these
05:35
private equity or or Warren Buffett like people out of Brazil.
05:39
And like you said, very little is known about him, and he doesn't give interviews in a lot of the interviews that I read about him, they said we actually try to talk to a bunch of his friends. And nearly all of his friends said, you know, thank you for reaching out, but he's politely asked us not to speak about him in interviews. So he prefers to stay behind the scenes. And the way that his career started in is, in nineteen thirty one, the age of thirty two. He had he had some jobs forehand where he was a banker, but he started this one bank, operator. You wanna help me out here? Here's what it's pronounced. Here's how you pronounce it. You see that right there? It's called Gerentia?
06:12
I don't see it. Did you put it in the chat? It's
06:16
highlighted in the doc.
06:17
Okay. I think it's guaranteed or something like that. Got an Chia.
06:21
Okay. And it was described as like the goldman of Brazil.
06:26
I don't know if it was described at the time like that, but he was thirty two when he launched it. It was nineteen seventy one. And what made it kind of famous was he had a very,
06:37
I wouldn't call it a laid back culture, but he didn't look at resumes. But instead, he looked for, what he described as PSD, which was poor. Or let me see. What does PSD stand for? Poor smart and deep desire to get rich. Yeah. Poor smart and deep desire to get rich. That's what he looked for. It was people who had PSD,
06:56
and he would hire these folks, and it in
07:00
previously at different companies, you would automatically get a bonus if you were one of the partner, but they created some type of system that was
07:07
they try to make it as merit based off of merits as much as possible. So a lot of different people can get bonuses And also, the bonuses you could choose, do you want more stock or do you want more cash? And it was a great way to incentivize people. And it kinda created this iconic culture that that seems what they're, they're famous for. And it grew to be quite huge. It was something like a billion dollars in profit at one year. But he said that they got cocky and they screwed up. They they overbought some stuff, and it eventually went south. And it sold for six hundred fifty million dollars, which is a still a ton of money. I think it was minuscule compared to how big it got.
07:42
So I have a question for you, Andrew. And and then we're gonna get into this three g thing. So then after he sold it for six fifty, he started buying Gillette stock
07:49
and
07:50
with his other older founders,
07:53
of the old company, he started three g, which was a play on their name, and there was three partners and they ended up buying,
08:00
Burger King,
08:01
Tim Hortons, all all the companies that you said. And at this point, he's worth something like twenty five billion dollars. And one of the one of the richest people in the world,
08:08
but I had a ton of questions,
08:10
that about this guy, that I think that you might know, or at least you have a better input than I do. The first is how on earth, like, when people say they're starting a bank like he did,
08:21
what's that process like? That sounds so ambiguous and so hard to understand.
08:25
Well, I think, like, people hear bank and they think, like, oh, a big pile of money, like Wells Fargo or something, but bank the term bank means so many different things. It could be somebody who works at a bank and lends out money or whatever.
08:37
But a banker is really like a real estate agent for businesses.
08:42
Right? Or for bonds or equities or whatever it is. So it's like a person you go to or a group of people you go to who will figure out problems for you and facilitate transactions.
08:54
So let's say you, Sam, go, I need to raise a hundred million dollars
08:59
of debt for the hustle because I need to expand. A banker will go out and they will go to all the wealthy people they know and all the different, you know, corporations and say, hey, here's this great guy. You should lend him money, and then they take a fee in between. And so in a lot of ways, it's the world's best business. You're a middle man on these huge transactions, multi billion dollar transactions,
09:19
and you're taking a two and a half to five percent fee on everything you do. So with, like, fifty to a hundred people, you can do crazy amounts of money.
09:27
What skill set? So when this guy started at thirty one,
09:30
thirty two, what skill set would he have needed in order to make this happen?
09:35
Well, it's really heavy on two things. One, it's like sales and stuff, and then the other is kind of financial acumen and modeling and all that. So you'd probably get a bunch of people in the office who are, like, super hardcore spreadsheet, junky, Excel types who can, like, figure out, you know, how to structure a deal. And then you'd also have people who can do the very high level sales. Right? So they're basically smooth talking and calling and selling and positioning everything to facilitate all the deals.
10:03
Do you consider yourself a banker?
10:05
No. I actually generally really hate dealing with bankers.
10:09
And I I think it's kinda like real estate agents. Right? Like, I'm very skeptical of real estate agents. I think in the next fifty years, they probably won't exist. A lot of the time a real estate agent is just a person who puts up a listing online for you, opens the door for a few people, and then takes a huge fee. Which seems crazy and out of line. Right? And and now there's great real estate agents. Let's say you have a weird property that might not sell. They know how to spruce up. There's one there's one in a hundred that's amazing, and we'll sell your property for more. But a lot of the time they're useless, and the same thing is kind of true with bankers. I think if you've got a great business and you wanna raise money,
10:46
you should just go and call a bunch of wealthy people and try and raise the money yourself. Because at the end of the day, a lot of the time what bankers do is build some decks and then breathe on the phone while you talk to other people and then take a huge fee.
10:58
How much money have you raised?
11:01
We've raised maybe to well, it depends on it depends on how you think about it. So,
11:07
I would say in the neighborhood of a two
11:10
two hundred two hundred and fifty million or something like that if you include our IPO
11:14
or our reverse takeover we just did.
11:16
Not including that. What's it? A hundred? Two hundred, maybe. Oh, so the the stack that you did wasn't a significant Not not including.
11:25
It was sixty million. That was that was how much we raised when we took that business public. Wow. So then your funds have well over a hundred. Yeah.
11:33
And you didn't use a banker for any of that?
11:35
No. We just called people we knew. I mean, we had we bumbled into this world. Like, I had no idea. Five years ago, six years ago, even I didn't know what the difference between a banker and a bank teller was. I had no idea.
11:47
And because of that, we just kinda kept meeting interesting business people. And as you've met interesting business people, they keep saying, hey, are you guys raising money? Cause I'd love to invest with you. And so eventually when we had big enough deals that were interesting and we wanted partners, I just called those people and we did it ourselves. So back to this guy, he, like, when you're starting something like this, and and this is, you like this guy because I imagine,
12:11
like, you, you, you kind of, wanna you wanna steal some of his life. Right? I mean, you wanna you wanna you you you wanna emulate some parts that he's done. Yeah? Well, I think, like, we're probably similar in that, like, we're both attracted to these really simple businesses like selling beer or razors. Like, there's both of us come from, like, this weird tech world where we do this, like, knowledge work. You you write an email newsletter. I do a design. And then two years later, it doesn't exist. Right? I like the longevity in the the kind of simplicity of more traditional businesses. So I love that. And I think the idea of just buying these super safe boring, steady, eddy businesses that do something simple in the world, and just making them better actually sounds like a lot of fun. And I wrote a note below, but the key thing about the what he does is,
13:01
generally,
13:02
they have one key insight. Right? So it'll be something as simple as when they bought Budweiser,
13:07
it was on the third generation. They've gotten super rich Right? So it was like the first generation built it. The second generation, like, were amazing. They went to Harvard. They grew it. The third generation took over They got sloppy. Didn't really care about growth. They had fancy offices and private jets and stuff. And so when they bought it, they just look at it and go oh, it's been run-in a kind of a sloppy way and they've lost their discipline. We can buy it with a lot of debt, and then we can just make it way better, pay off our debt, and then we own Budweiser.
13:37
And so it's this crazy coup for these guys from Brazil
13:41
who, you know, they came from basically,
13:44
you know, started at zero Although I think they were, you know, upper middle class in Brazil, but starting there to owning Budweisers crazy. And I wanna ask you to get into those deals. And and when I read about him, it sounded like he was the young guy of a three person partnership,
13:59
which definitely helped. I think he's actually the old guy. So there's the two younger guys The younger guys actually go and they run the businesses. So, like, one of the partners,
14:07
I believe, went in and runs,
14:11
runs,
14:12
what is it called QSR, which is, like, owns Tim Hortons and all that stuff. Sorry. I meant from his first thing. So his first thing got him his big nut his first thing Yeah. Made them, like, six fifty or they sold for six fifty. And from what it sounds like, it was like, I, an a little bit of an older guy who'd a little bit been there, done that. Kind of brought him along, and he was the young guy of that partnership. Totally. Yeah. And then he did the same thing, and now he has younger partners.
14:35
Right. And, and so I have a I had a few questions about this. But I wanted to so let's just talk about this guy's strategy at 3G and and his whole life. It seems he's done the same thing, which is he's
14:47
a cheap skate. He's frugal. He's incredibly frugal.
14:50
So he's done a couple like, he has a few, like, phrases that they would say, which is, like, He's like, costs are like fingernails. You have to cut them constantly.
14:58
And he would do famous things like when they bought Burger King, they banned color copies. Meaning when you're using the photo copy machine,
15:05
he's like, just black and white only.
15:08
You also what what was this thing you said about private jets? They they also force people to print on both sides. They'd say you not only can you not print color, but you have to print double sided.
15:19
So the first thing they would always do whenever they buy a business is they sell all the private jets immediately. Right? And let let's be real. Most Fortune five hundred companies have, like, between one and ten private jets. And they just say, f that, we don't need those. They sell them, and it's kind of a statement And then from that point on, the new CEO and all the executives, they have to fly economy, and they have to stay in motels.
15:41
And they all
15:43
They it's I love that. Right? I think it just sets the tone from the top in a really interesting way. And these are people. I mean, the CEO of AB Inbev, he's probably worth, like, hundred millions of dollars and he's staying at, like, a quality in. But I think there's something to demonstrating that at the top if you want your lower lower level employees to care to. I actually think that that's a stupid thing. So I get staying at cheap hotels because staying at, like, a Marriott courtyard, which is like a eighty nine dollar thing, I'm on board with that. It's probably even cheaper. So if it's fifty bucks, I'm cool with that. It's just that you can have a fine, clean, comfortable place. Although, I do like having room service because if you get into a late you want that. But
16:21
whenever these people say they fly economy, I'm like, that's kind of stupid. If I fly overnight, I need a comfortable I need to be comfortable so I could, like, be ready to roll. You know, you're like, you don't want your athletes to, like, work off the two hours sleep.
16:33
Do you actually believe that people do that?
16:36
I think they do. I mean, maybe it's just lore.
16:39
Maybe these guys are super rich and they pay for it personally or something like that. But, I I don't know. I mean, I think if you're I know, like, Walmart has a big corporate jet,
16:49
fleet, and they actually have a really good argument for it, which is they're constantly visiting stores, and that's their way of kind of like whipping all the store managers and making sure they do a good job. And so they have all these tiny little jets that fly between small towns. And if there were to fly commercial, it would take ten days to do two days of work. So I think there's a good argument for it there. But I can't imagine the CEO of AD InBev needs to be flying all over the world constantly. If he's flying once or twice a month, it's not a big deal to be on a commercial plane or whatever, think it's kind of a
17:19
I think it's a neat thing to do. I personally, like, you know, I I wouldn't I would feel bad. Like, I would be worried that I'm gonna get though a worse CEO because they want, like, their perks or whatever. But the kind of people these guys hire, like, these guys, when they took over Burger King, they hired a thirty five year old as a CFO. Right? Or maybe even a thirty year old. And the owner is the CEO.
17:41
Yeah. Yeah. I I wrote about it. They hired a thirty two year old who, was part of their management company.
17:48
And he took it over and he kicked ass. A few things that he did was, at the time, Burger King was on was trying to predominantly towards the young man. And he goes, no, we're gonna be for everyone. So we're gonna advertise for everyone. Another thing that he did was do you remember the king, burger king, like King. Yeah. He was like, that's kinda creepy. Get rid of that.
18:06
And then the, the third thing that he did was, at the time, Burger King employed something, like, twenty eight thousand people. So they owned most of their restaurants and they would hire the people. He goes, no, we're gonna switch to a franchise, and we're gonna help all these franchise owners line up loans. You guys can make your own places really nice, and we're gonna help you make it nice. And that was the big switch that he did. Now Burger King, I believe, pressures it. And this is we've seen this in our own investing, like, often having one thesis. Right? So the thesis could be, hey, margins are really shitty. You know, they're they're five percent. They should be fifteen percent, and we can do that via via very simple improvements
18:40
or something simple like this Burger King deal where they went into big debt and they actually paid up a really high price to do it. But the insight they had was, well, as soon as we take over, we're just gonna spin out all of our corporately owned locations and franchise them And by doing that, we're gonna raise all the money to pay off our debt. Right? And so they did that, and then they ended up taking it public with Ackman, actually,
19:03
and did insanely well in it. Oh, that's interesting. And
19:07
when they did it,
19:09
there there was a funny story about the guy,
19:12
who we're talking about. I'm gonna try and say his name one more time. What is it?
19:19
I wanna when I see it, I wanna say Horhead,
19:22
But, anyway, he
19:24
so there there's a funny story about him that he had never had Burger King until
19:30
they bought the company. And it was like a multi billion dollar deal. He didn't eat it until they bought the company. And when he ate it, he was like, this is too big. And he's known for like really only drinking water and eating really healthy, but he owns,
19:42
you know, non healthy stuff. What's your take on that? Do you think that does that rub you the wrong way? Are you like, oh, no. I think I think it rubs me the wrong way. I think he sounds like he's really good at kind of being secretive and PR. That's exactly the sort of thing I wouldn't wanna give out. Or I wouldn't want it out in public or whatever. I think it sounds kinda lame.
20:01
So this type of business,
20:02
that you like, and I I enjoy too. But,
20:06
would when I was reading all about them, would you say this boy to me, it boils down to you have to be good at fundraising money. So you have to be good at getting convincing
20:15
some type of rich institution or rich people to give you money. The second thing you have to get good at is you have to recruit really, really talented people. Typically, people that are highly recruited at other places, typically people who could start their own things, typically people who are probably already wealthy, you have to hire them. And then third, and probably most important, you have to be really good at aspiring and leading them. So you have to be a leader of leaders.
20:37
Is that like the three
20:39
three pillars to am I missing Exactly. You nailed it. It's really, and it's really, really hard. The hardest part is recruiting the the amazing people. Like, our biggest challenge isn't doing deals. It's like we could do a deal every month. It's how can we find enough amazing people to run all these businesses
20:56
And then how can we validate that they're gonna be able to do what we need from them? And, you know, you think about, like, that thirty two year old, he was probably working in head office for ten years and they saw all this stuff, but it's a huge chance to hand that to him. And that could have gone really, really poorly.
21:11
But I I think that's exactly that's the Warren Buffett playbook. Right? It's like how do you be a leader of leaders? How do you give them positive coaching without, like, getting too involved in the day to day. And the fundraising part actually seems like the easiest. The fundraising, honestly, like, it was So when we did, we have a we have a fund and, which we raised during COVID just because we thought we were gonna get mobbed. And it was really weird. We actually COVID was, like, Like, we thought we were gonna have
21:38
no. No. We thought we were gonna have, like, overwhelming amounts of deals to do, and we thought it would be a great time to have excess capital.
21:45
And, that didn't happen. Right? Everyone was actually weirdly optimistic and the government wrote the check and all that stuff. But, but doing doing the money raising wasn't actually that hard, like, running an agency for or owning an agency for fifteen years and doing sales for a long time. Like, that's easy. You just have a fun conversation with someone. You walk them through a deck. You point to track record. That that was totally fine. The hard part is really the execution of the actual deals and hiring the right people.
22:15
And I would argue I mean, I don't know really what I'm talking about entirely. This is strictly from reading. It seems
22:22
like executing the deals is hard, but it's not that hard. The hard part is really the people part.
22:30
Is that
22:31
We we I would we've done deals. We just did our biggest deal ever.
22:36
And it was over a hundred million dollars. And it was no more work or complexity than doing a one million dollar deal. And in fact, it was simpler than a one million dollar deal because it's just a better business with a better team in place and more momentum. What did it do? Is always complicated people.
22:52
Well, in our in our public company, we bought a company called Stamp, which is one of the top ratings and reviews apps on Shopify.
22:59
And we just closed that email.
23:00
There's a
23:02
hundred and hundred and ten, I believe, total.
23:04
It gets paid out. It's a structure. You'd have to look at the press release for the exact structure, but it's in and around there.
23:11
And
23:11
when I was reading this, I'm in the middle of reading human nature by Robert Green. And the reason, have you heard of that? It's an amazing book. I've been reading that too. Have you really? Wow. It's amazing. Isn't it crazy? It's so good. It's so everything he does is Right? And the reason The laws the laws of human nature, isn't it called? Right? Yeah. The laws of human nature. And I already read it. And now I'm rereading it again, but I'm studying it, like, I wasn't, like, I'm taking a semester of Robert Green. And the reason why I am reading it is because
23:40
I thought that when I was getting into business, all that would matter is like business. And you're like, well, what's business? It's like, I don't know.
23:47
Like, I guess selling stuff, making the product really good.
23:51
In my business, it was like, I'm just gonna write words that people like. Like, it's really simple. But What I've learned is it's far more important to understand and motivate human beings and have really
24:03
affected day to day interactions
24:06
with people. And in order to do that, you have to have a little bit of a
24:10
I'll call it like a Machavellian type of thing to you where, like, people love you, yet they're far a little bit fearful of you. They kind of view you as like a little bit of mysterious. Like, you have to attract these people and they have to both wanna be around you yet think that you're formidable and be a little bit, like, nervous of, like, oh, man, if I don't join this person, they're gonna crush me. Or live up to your expectations.
24:33
What do you mean? Well, like, basically, how do you one of the thing like, some of the some people I've worked with have this thing where you just want you always wanna raise the bar and you always wanna live up to their expectations. So they say, this is the bar. This is what I expect from you, but they do it in a very flattering way. Like, you're really smart. You work really hard. I'm so impressed with you. I know you can achieve this. Right? And then they set this crazy bar and you just naturally wanna live up to the expectations. And I'm happy with that.
25:01
Well, just different different partner business partners and stuff I've dealt with over the last couple of years.
25:07
But but,
25:09
like, with employees and stuff, I've always had this habit of wanting to be liked. And I still wanna be liked, but I wanna be firm and I wanna have boundaries because in the past, what I've done is
25:18
in wanting to be liked, I've excused,
25:20
like, somebody failing. And so, like, it's okay. Don't worry about it. It's fine. And then I'd quietly just dismiss them and then not use them for tasks like that, whereas I think it's actually really important to be like, hey, look, like, it's okay. You f ed up, but, like, you let me down. And here's why you let me down, and here's how this impacted everything. Or here's the bar and here's how what I from you and whatever it is. And I I've always been terrible at that.
25:43
It's crazy. I mean, Elon Musk has a Bill Ackman who you know has a this who were talking about, he definitely had it. When I looked out at him and I, like, would see how he would dress and how he held himself.
25:55
You know, Travis Callanet kinda has it. Where they're just like, you're just you're afraid of them in a way of, like, they inspire me, but, like,
26:04
they they can crush it. Like, the whatever they whatever they set their mind to, they're gonna get done. And that's regardless if you agree with their ethics or not, but you definitely could agree that, like, these guys are gonna they're going places.
26:14
And
26:15
There's a great story about, Cheryl Sandberg at Facebook. I forget who who told this story, but she goes, I was in a meeting with Cheryl.
26:22
And I, you know, I gave this presentation.
26:25
And then she walked me outside, and she said, during your presentation,
26:29
it was great. But you kept saying, like,
26:32
Only stupid people say, like, and you're not stupid. And then she walked away. Right? And you can look at that and go, oh my god. I can't believe she did that. That's so mean. But the way she told it was like it was a kind of a backhanded compliment
26:44
that told her something that was embarrassing. It's like saying like, hey, you have like you know, you have lettuce in your teeth or whatever. You don't wanna hear it, but, like, it's helpful. And I think I've been very bad at that kind of stuff. I think you need to give more firm feedback.
26:57
That story is from,
26:58
radical,
27:00
candid, radical candor, whatever. Yeah. Radical candor. It's a good one. But, as I was reading this guy, I'm like, man, in order to get into some of these deals, like Hines,
27:09
whatever, in order to attract these, I mean, basically, like,
27:14
this guy and the folks who we talk about, and maybe I think you as well, Andrew, that you're like uncommon amongst the uncommon.
27:22
And you have to lead the killers. So, like, you've gotta be the killer amongst killers.
27:27
And that is kind of like a fascinating thing to think about. To bring it back to what I originally said, when I got into business, I thought it was all about coming up with creative ideas. It's like, no, I just gotta be a leader of men and women. And that's really hard. And so I've been studying how to do that, and I've been studying, like, war leaders, been studying, you know, who really is good at this, like, celebrity like Marilyn Monroe. It's like it's basically kind of seduction a little bit.
27:50
And how do you just like get people under your spell and hopefully your spells
27:54
positive, but
27:55
I don't know. Yeah. I think, like, there's a I think it sounds stressful, though, like, the idea of, like, I'm gonna be a killer and I'm gonna, you know, do all this stuff and be Machiavellian. Like, I really don't I don't like that feeling of, like, feeling like I'm manipulating someone. What I like to think about more what's been more instructive for me is just reading psychology like Robert Cialdini and all that stuff and figuring out incentives. And one of the things I've learned is that If somebody is incentivized
28:21
to not work as hard as you or not care as much as you, they won't.
28:25
Right? So people do whatever it's it's shocking, but they'll do whatever whatever the financial or day to day lifestyle incentive is where they can take the path of least resistance, they will. And then they'll create their own narrative for why they're doing Right? They might say, I'm not working hard because, you know, I don't like my work environment or whatever, or there's a problem with management or whatever it is. But often it's actually them just going, why would I work harder? I don't make more money. Right? I don't get a bonus for working harder. I clock in my time or whatever. I think a lot of the time this stuff is just the incentives problem, and that that's pervasive through everything. Going back to realtors, they have a incentive to just sell your house for the lowest price. To get it done to to lock in their fee. They have an incentive against you. I agree with you that that is part of the that is that is that is a portion of it. I would say that there's if there's two portions, those are both them. But I think you're totally full of shit and that you don't care about this because you do. Your
29:22
your your public image is and I don't know if you mean to do this or not, but I'm a I'll tell you what your image is. It's like, you're like a cool guy. Like, you dress nice. You've got slick back hair. You're good looking. You have these cool glasses.
29:34
You're a designer.
29:35
I mean, brother, look at, like, the website. What's the URL of tiny?
29:41
Tiny capital? Tiny capital. You use the same wonderful imagery used, like, you have a breath. And a brand is is exactly this Machavellian thing that I'm describing of how manipulate the feelings of emotion.
29:53
I don't know. I think it's either the word Machabellian, but you aren't manipulating people to feel a certain way. And you're really good at it. No. No. No. Absolutely. But it's like copy. Right? Like, knowing how to write good copy. What you're really doing is you're taking people along for an emotional journey by using various words. Right? And there's two ways to look at it. One is, oh, it's who's super manipulative
30:12
or the other is, no, you're trying to communicate and you're an effective communicator.
30:16
Right? And don't get me wrong. We definitely
30:18
do, like, yuck up the kind of
30:22
the softness of what we do. But it comes from, like, you know, we dealt with Wall Street bankers. We dealt with people trying to acquire companies. They were shitty. So this is me going, oh, well, I hated that. How can I market to those people who have the same hatred that I did? Or whatever, but yes. You there's definitely a lot of public public image stuff that we think about.
30:42
So we'll wrap up with this billy of the week
30:45
segment, but what's your main takeaways from this guy? And, there there's a book about him. It's called like greatness, I think. I I couldn't find I only saw it in Portuguese. I don't know if there's an English version.
30:56
Yeah. It's called,
30:58
oh, what is it? Good dream big. Dream? It's on Amazon. Yeah. Quite good. I read it maybe four or five years ago. What's your main takeaways from this guy? Why? Why?
31:07
What what can I learn from him and what should I avoid? Think it's, like, you don't need to do something innovative and crazy. Right? You don't need to be the next Elon Musk or start some crazy technology. You can just choose a traditional business that's very poorly run. And run it better. And I, you know, even better if it's a business that's low risk, growing, and kind of successful despite bad management. Or, you know, bloated cost structure or something. And you wrote something in here that
31:33
was important
31:35
which is different than how I perceived you as doing, which was,
31:40
you need to be comfort, comfortable taking on outside capital and having partners. Well, I think, like, for this exact structure. Right? So what they do, they raise a lot of debt, and that allows them to have, you know, a lot of control because they have debt, but it's silent. It's not involved in the operations,
31:56
and that gives them the ability to just like overrule and take over.
32:00
And you gotta raise a lot of money. I mean, if you're gonna go buy Heinz ketchup, like, that's not the kind of deal you can get, like, a crazy deal on. You're gonna have to pay the highest market price for. In order to do that, you gotta raise a lot of money. Compared to what we do, like, we're not buying the Heinz ketchup. We're buying the, like, random local ketchup brand. Right? That's, like, been successful in a small niche, those deals you can find.
32:23
Oh, and I I wanna ask one more question before we wrap up, actually. So I actually was thinking about this. So, like, you're further along. You're a few years older than me, but not only a couple years older, but in terms of like career success, you you're you're a fair bit ahead of me in terms of like know, we're both going down the same path.
32:39
And then one path
32:41
in front of that, your friends with guys like Bill Ackman, these folks that are worth you know, billions of dollars in that. And and yadi, like, they're just doing shit. So, like,
32:51
along this path, let's say, of the spectrum of people doing stuff,
32:55
it starts with, like, an scrappy internet
32:58
nerd in their bedroom like you and I were. And then it comes to, like, alright, you get a little bit of success like I have. And then it comes like, alright, you're starting to, like, move things a little bit. But even you said you're still a Pipsqueak compared to, like, you know, a enactment or whatever. Well, how does this this transition from going from like someone who's kind of interesting to like a mover and shaker on a at a global scale?
33:22
How do you
33:23
does that kinda seem like a crazy transition to? Because it it it's kinda like you're not far from that. It seems
33:31
but, like, these guys like Bill Ackman, when they say something, they're in the news. When they say, when they, like, make a trades every once in a while, it can, like, impact millions of people.
33:41
Yeah. I mean, I don't I look I just look and look up and see how far we have to go. I still feel really, really small. And you start, you know, like, you know, when you, like, you're running your company and you're, like, you tell people, like, oh, we do a million dollars a year in profit. And to you, that's like a crazy amount of money. And then you realize, oh my god, there's businesses out there that do thirty million or a hundred million or a billion dollars of profit every year and the numbers just keep getting bigger. I just find as we get bigger, I just start talking to people who have businesses that are way bigger. And, you know, it's funny you mentioned Acman, I mean, Akman, I don't know what he's worth, probably, like, four or five, six billion dollars, but this Georgia Apollo guy, he's worth twenty five. Right? And so everyone's looking up at some some person that they wanna be and someone doing bigger stuff. I think,
34:29
it's kind of like The analogy I would use is if you're an athlete, and you start out as just some casual high school athlete, and then you end up in the Olympics. And you just keep rising up and doing more and more stuff and eventually you look around and go like, whoa, holy crap. I made it to the Olympics. This is crazy.
34:46
But I don't necessarily think it buys you any happiness or a better life early. And I think there's a really interesting decision of, well, do you wanna be a mover and shaker? Is it worth all the downsides? And I think there are quite a few. No, shit. I agree.
35:00
Alright. Let's talk about some ideas.
35:03
What we're gonna talk about is not necessarily an idea, but something that you're working on right now. I wanna talk about Capitol Daily because I've seen you I've seen this from the beginning, and I'm getting updates. This latest update sounds pretty amazing. Yeah. So, I mean, the last two years, I'll I'll actually let me just zoom out and I'll say talk about what happened. So Basically,
35:21
I read the newspaper every day.
35:23
I would read the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and read all this incredible investigative reporting
35:29
and then I would pick up my local paper, which is called the Times colonists here in Victoria Canada.
35:34
And it was just there's nothing It was like they didn't have any journalists. They'd laid everyone off, and it was all just like AP wire service. So it's like international news. And I was like, how the hell do I figure out what's going on in my own city? And I realized there's a few people doing local reporting, but there's this gap there. And so I thought, okay. Well, if I want this, I'm sure other people do.
35:55
And I looked at buying the local paper, actually, but they wanted, like, a crazy amount of money. They had like printing presses,
36:01
like, you know, unionized employees. It's like a cruise ship, not a speedboat. It'd be a pain in the ass to buy it. And so I went to a friend who is a,
36:09
a stay at home mom who had some experience doing a bunch of writing,
36:14
and I said, hey, why don't we just start a Mailchimp account? And we'll come up with a brand. We called it Capitol Daily. And we'll send out a daily newsletter, and we'll just summarize, like, hey, here's, like, three or four stories of things that are happening in town. So we start doing this. And,
36:28
I've I have a friend who runs a PPC agency, and I get him to just go buy ads. And I realized I can buy ads for, like, nothing. No one's advertising for local news. Break that down. So you're saying you you had a friend that would would buy advertising to to get new users, and you said Hey. Could you see if you could run some ads to get, email subscribers to Capitol Daily? Yeah. I was like, how do I get this to scale as quickly as possible? A, I saw an opportunity, and b, I realized that in local news, usually there's one winner. Right? So historically, there's usually been one big newspaper. And so I was, like, do I get this as big as possible as fast as possible? And I was also just impatient. I was like, I have money. I can afford to do it. I'm just gonna spend, like, two hundred grand on ads. And so we spent, I don't know, a hundred, two hundred grand. And very quickly, we got to, like, twenty five thousand subscribers
37:19
And I just started hiring journalists and, built out a team, and it was it was crazy. Like, I would be in a cafe and people would stop me and be like, Hey, are you the Capital Daily guy? Like, thank you so much. It's amazing. Like, the first thing I do when I wake up and drink my coffee is read your newsletter.
37:36
And that was an amazing feeling. Like, I've got all these other businesses that are, like, big, and I've never, ever, ever felt that sense of community and just, like, doing something important. And so was having a lot of fun with it.
37:48
We started hiring a whole bunch of people, and, we realized, like, hey, this is hard. Like, the advertisers don't understand it. Like, people who buy newspaper ads, they're just stuck in their ways. They're old. They're, like, all boomers and stuff. And so we were having a really hard time selling ads. I also built this big news team and was like burning all this money. And I was kind of freaking out going like, I don't know if this is have I got myself into some trouble here? But,
38:13
a little over
38:14
six months a year ago,
38:16
I partnered with this guy Farhan, and he had scaled the biggest local news site in Vancouver.
38:21
And he took over as CEO, and now he's monetized
38:24
it. And I think we're gonna break even very soon on, the local stuff in Victoria,
38:30
We've started selling out ads. And I think, like, on a unit economic basis, where we look at Victoria, it's now profitable.
38:37
And it can be very profitable if our membership model works. And we've started expanding. So we've now got,
38:43
six or seven different newsletters and different areas mostly here in Canada,
38:48
and we're scaling. I'm I'm super excited about it. So is that over story media group?
38:54
Yeah.
38:55
So
38:56
go ahead. I it's funny. We like we'd we chose the name. I like the name Overstory.
39:02
But we got cute and we were like, oh, overstory media group is o m g, and that looks cool as a logo.
39:07
And so we chose overstory media group, but then now everyone calls it that and I hate that name. But I I really like Overstory.
39:14
Okay. Overstory.
39:16
So Overstory
39:17
is the parent company that owns Capitol Bailey.
39:20
Yeah. Dude, it looks like you have, like, fifty people working there. Yeah. We've we've scaled a lot over the last little bit. Are these also take that Yeah. These are all pretty much all full time people.
39:32
How much did you invest to start this business?
39:35
I think at this point, I've probably spent
39:38
to
39:39
just over two million bucks, but you have to remember that probably the first seven hundred k was just me
39:47
be not monetizing
39:48
it soon enough and just focusing on building the audience first.
39:52
So I think we probably spent two hundred, two hundred and fifty k in ads. And then we probably burned an unnecessary five hundred k, like, hiring the wrong people and kind of, like, experimenting.
40:03
So, really, like, at this point, we have the biggest news business in my city for probably
40:10
seven hundred and fifty to a million.
40:13
And I think that business can probably add scale,
40:16
probably do five hundred to a million in profit once we're actually, like, going.
40:21
So I feel pretty good about it, but now we're taking this bigger bet that know, we can basically roll out local news across Canada.
40:27
And
40:28
far Han is your co is he's like the the co founder. Yeah. Your founder. Yeah. And so you attracted him because you go out and put up the money if you run it.
40:37
Exactly. Like I said, look, I've already kind of got this thing. I've proven the model out. And,
40:43
you know, he was looking for his next thing. And it was one of those things. You know, when you just meet someone and you go, oh my god. I wanna do business with this person, and they just have the right background. Like, he'd done he'd spent, like, five, ten years doing the exact thing that I needed.
40:56
So it's a total no brainer.
40:58
Dude, I feel like this is a much bigger deal than you're making it seem.
41:01
Yeah. It's pretty crazy what it's become. And it's, you know, it goes back to I have in total,
41:08
I spend a lot more time on this business than the others because it's like a passion project, and I'm a consumer of it. Right? I read it every and I give them feedback.
41:16
And I think I know a far ahead with, like, daily text about it. But,
41:21
I've only really spent a few, probably less than a week of time on this. And the key leverage point has just been,
41:28
bringing Farhan on board is when Farhan joined, it was just a single newsletter with, like, three employees.
41:34
So now, I mean, he's gone out and basically said, look, like Axios down in the States is aggressively expanding their local. And I think that's because it's gonna work, and it can be affordable. Let's go do the exact same thing in Canada.
41:48
And so you're gonna hope well, how's the story gonna end do you think?
41:53
I don't know. I mean, I think that if it's true in Victoria,
41:57
it's probably true in a lot of other places.
42:00
The interesting thing is trying to figure out like,
42:04
you know, what topics people really wanna hear and are they really variable
42:08
city by city. Right? So for example, like, we expanded into language which is a suburb suburb here, and it's more working class. And so it's figuring out, okay, you know, what do those people wanna hear
42:21
versus somebody who lives, you know, in in Victoria or in Vancouver,
42:26
do they want different topics? Like, you know, just that kind of stuff, I think, is gonna be really interesting to figure out. And what's your membership,
42:34
your subscription gonna be?
42:36
We haven't announced it yet, but we're kind of thinking about, like, somewhere between a hundred and two hundred dollars a year,
42:42
getting local discounts, access to events, maybe like a member only newsletter,
42:47
and extra content and stuff. One of the things I really wanna do is start hosting events in person because, like, as you know, it's one thing to see a number of, like, oh, the hustle has a million,
42:57
million subscribers. But when you meet up with people in person, it's crazy. So I'm really excited to, like, fill a room with all the subscribers and just see what that feels like. Yeah. Me and Sean are going to Miami. We just posted about it. We got,
43:10
like three hundred people signed up. Great.
43:13
So, yeah, Bob, this is amazing. I can't believe you didn't ask and be part of this dude.
43:18
So frustrating. Maybe I maybe I will. I I'm I think it's I have it's all just my own money at this point. So if I decide I gotta go big, I'll definitely hit you up. I'm very interested.
43:27
You gotta make me an adviser. I think this is gonna be sick. Alright. You wanna talk about another idea. So you we'll talk about the paper thing in a second. What's this?
43:35
Which one do you wanna move to? Let's do the pregnancy stuff. Okay. I think that's cool. Well, you wanna be able to yeah. Go. This is like a business in a box. This is one of those things that I would do if I had time, but I don't I think it's a really good idea. So,
43:49
people love to spend money on their kids, making their kids better, smarter, feeling like good parents and stuff, There's all sorts of, like, you know, baby emotes are, you know, different,
43:59
health things people do for their kids, but nobody really thinks about health during pregnancy.
44:04
And I think this is something that's really important that's totally overlooked.
44:08
My son was born early. He was born, like, three weeks early and low birth weight. And he's fine. Like, we haven't had any health issues or anything, but any parent who's gone through that nose, it's absolutely terrifying.
44:21
And I started researching it a ton, and I realized that there's all sorts of things that you can proactively do to ensure that you have a really healthy,
44:30
a really healthy pregnancy,
44:32
but then also
44:34
to,
44:35
like, basically optimize your kid. So if you think about it, your kid is growing a brain and a body. They get to do that once. Right? Like, this is the building this is the foundation of your kid. And so I started researching all this stuff. I talked to a really smart friend, my friend, doctor, Anna Patrick,
44:50
and, basically, I realized there's, like, all these studies that show that kids and mothers who have, like, fish and DHA supplements, b vitamins,
45:01
make sure they're not anemic and stuff it minimizes
45:04
any risk of pregnancy, and it also maximizes
45:07
IQ,
45:08
and general flourishing, ADHD, all this other stuff. So there's this huge in marketing,
45:12
the most important thing is to have a hook and the hook can be fear. Right? How do you avoid this terrible outcome? And one of the problems with doctors is when you talk to a doctor, they just don't wanna scare your wife during pregnancy. And so they just say, take vitamin d or do this thing. They don't explain why. And so I think explaining to mothers, here's why you wanna do this. Here's all the potential bad things you can avoid. And, hey, you can make your kid smarter and better in the process. There's a huge opportunity to basically do, like, Roman or hymns, but for maternal health. So you do blood work, supplements, they get delivered on a schedule, and it's about building like a super baby.
45:53
And you said you you'd wanna invest your own money in this. That's what you said here. Yeah. I I would love if anyone wants to do this, I will hundred percent invest. So please email me But this is one of those things where, like, every three months, I'm like, why the hell hasn't anyone done this yet?
46:08
Well, there is a but there's a reason why you shouldn't invest in this. What you've written here. Yeah. I think it's a this is a great business for someone who's never done a business before because it's a good, like, launch pad business. It's something that can make, like, it could be big, but there's no competitive at barrier. Right? So you're gonna go out, you're gonna do this, then a bunch of people are gonna copy you, and you can probably make a good living on this I don't think it has, like, a moat necessarily, except for maybe, like, a brand that mothers share or something. But I think there's something here. Have you heard of the, there's this guy named,
46:41
I forget his name.
46:43
Joel, maybe. Joel on writing is his blog. And he says there's Ben and Jerry businesses, and then there's,
46:51
Ben and Jerry's versus Amazon is what he says. He goes, but Ben and Jerry
46:55
It's like a unique interesting brand and
46:58
a person can go to ice cream five days a week and try all types of different stuff and everyone can survive And the only thing that separates Ben and Jerry is just that it's slightly different, but there's enough for everyone to succeed. Like, you know, there's a there's enough space. We can all win. And you can grow it pretty slowly for a hundred years, and it could probably last for a hundred years, and probably won't go away very easily.
47:20
But then there's like an Amazon, which is you can really only you really are only gonna subscribe to one Amazon Prime.
47:26
And once you give your credit card to Amazon, save it, you're probably just gonna you to use that. And so with the Ben and Jerry business, it's okay to go slow. It's no big deal. You don't have to raise a lot of money. You can grow slower as long as you want to do twenty, thirty years, it can get bit. You gotta get huge really fast.
47:43
Because everyone can copy you. It's kinda like Rome's in him. There's a reason why, like, there was, like, five right away because someone saw it and they go, oh, crap. Copy it. You could spin this shit up in three weeks, but him's the only moat here is size. It's literally a form. Think about what hims is, the original website was a well designed site. They put some, like, they find some stock images that are hip of, like, pill bottles. They add their logo on to it. So it looks like it's a special thing. And then they literally have, like, a form you fill out, and then a doctor just goes yeah, rubber stamp. Okay. I'll do it. I'll send the prescription or whatever. And they've gotten way more sophisticated, but at the end of the day, there's no lock in. Other than the fact that I happen to subscribe with them. And so other people just go out and you end up basically competing into whatever the cost of the ads is. If it costs two bucks to convert someone, then you can make five cents per. Right? And that's what happens with these businesses. But I think for a year or two, you could probably make a lot of money.
48:38
We first started this. I said we should break this up into two. I actually think we should break it up and we should keep it as one. And because you you have to go at the at ten minutes pass. Right?
48:47
Yeah. Something around about about one fifteen. So you have this thing called what is enough money. I one hundred percent wanna talk about that. So let's talk about one more bit one more idea
48:57
and then we can come back. Enter has a huge list of ideas. We'll save these and and do it for the next one. But what, which other idea do you wanna go to? Yeah. This one's really this is a really weird story, but so my whole life I could never burp.
49:10
So my brother would like burp in my face and I'd be like, what the hell? How do I do that? I couldn't. It was really, really bizarre. And, you know, I'd drink, like, pop and I'd feel bloated and crappy and I couldn't burp, but it wasn't a big deal. I didn't think much of it. And,
49:24
then when I was about twenty three or twenty four, I started getting this weird acid reflux.
49:29
And I just get this shitty feeling of pressure and then acid reflux and it started happening
49:35
day after day after day, and it started driving me absolutely crazy. And so about seven or eight years ago, I started researching it, and I knew nothing about health, I knew nothing about diet, and I just basically had to figure everything out myself. And I tried everything. I tried
49:51
drugs, supplements. I had, like, you know, stuff, you know, surgeries where they stick stuff down your throat and put cameras down there. I had a wire put down my throat to check on my stomach acid.
50:02
I did acupuncture,
50:03
like, everything,
50:04
and nothing worked.
50:06
And finally, after seven years of researching this,
50:10
I was on Google and I I thought about this burping thing, and I was like, oh, wonder if it's that. And I found this Reddit community called No Burp.
50:18
And there's this huge community of people who also can't burp. And on that community, there was somebody, and they said, look, there's this doctor in Chicago
50:27
and he injects Botox into the cricopharyngeal
50:30
muscle in your throat, and it allows you to burp. And so, basically, the reason why people can't burp is they have this weird muscle that's too tight. So I flew down Chicago about six months ago, and I got this injection. And now I can burp, and I don't get acid reflux anymore. And my life is literally, like, twenty five percent better. I'm happier. Like, this was actually driving me insane. What was your first burp? Like, was it? Like, have you seen how the color blind people put these on and they could see colors or when I I put it on I actually put it on Twitter. I put it on Twitter. I'll find it for you and we can share it in the show notes. You're like, there's video of re burping. It sounded it sounds insane too. Right? Like, I just, like yeah. It's, like, one of those videos where the dog gets home and hasn't seen the owner for four years. Like, I'm just, like, I'm just, like, I'm just, like, I'm very emotional,
51:14
but, it sounds f ed up. Now I can burp like a normal person. Do you have thirty five years
51:19
of gas built up?
51:21
Dude, literally. Like, it's I didn't know I didn't know what it was like to just feel, like, release. Right? I just always had pressure.
51:27
So so, anyway, so I would have spent a lot of money. A lot of money to figure this out. And I tried all sorts of stuff. I looked at, like, can I go to the Mayo Clinic? Like, whatever. And the problem is that the medical industry is just very fractured. So everyone does one very specific thing, and there's no one that brings it all together. And most GPs,
51:47
you know, they are or,
51:49
primary physicians, they can help you, but they're not gonna go deep on an issue and really spend time on this. And so I think there's an interesting business opportunity. I don't know how big it is, but this idea of a medical advocate.
52:00
This is basically a project manager for your problem. So you'd say, like, I have diabetes or I have a rare condition or I have this symptom, and they're gonna go to every doctor's appointment. They're gonna get you into the best specialist. They're gonna push the doctors to do testing. They're gonna look at all the outcomes, all the data, read all the papers.
52:17
And I think this is the sort of thing that wealthy people specifically would pay a lot of money And especially if you could make an outcome based where you say, if I cure this for you, what's it worth to you, I think this could be actually a pretty big business. So two things. The first, have you heard of a concierge doctor?
52:33
Yes.
52:34
So I have,
52:36
basically, I pay and and I have it because someone like got it for me when I was like really ill.
52:42
This billionaire lady, it was a crazy story that I'll tell another time. But, basically,
52:47
I,
52:48
have this doctor named Doctor Horowitz, and I just text him. I go, hey, doctor Horowitz,
52:52
my Achilles really hurts me. Can you schedule an MRI for me or something like that? And he's like, yeah, I think an MRI would be good. I'll hook it up. So that, you know, and I pay the annual fee for it. Twenty five thousand dollars.
53:03
And,
53:04
would that not be this?
53:07
Well, it I think that's very I have that as well, but I think it's very driven by whatever you want. Right? So you text them, you say you want an MRI. But if you say, hey, my back is hurting, The question is is he gonna be able to have time to spend four hours a day researching your back specifically and figure that out for you is he gonna have time to go to all the doctor's appointments and interact with all the specialists
53:30
and negotiate with them and everything? That's what I'm looking for is, like, someone to be in the room to solve problems. And
53:36
because I think a lot of people have, like, a a loved one gets cancer And they're like, well, how do I navigate this? Like, what's the optimal treatment? What am I missing? Am I talking to the wrong doctor? Like, what advice is bad, etcetera?
53:50
Kinda like,
53:51
a health, a health manager.
53:53
Totally.
53:54
And it's specifically around an an issue or, like, you could do it around specific but I think it's I think it's kind of like a a weird niche. I recently heard about a business where all they did was negotiate,
54:06
bills for hospitals.
54:08
And it was a, like, a a very small number of people, and this business made an absolute killing. And that kinda turned me on to these niche medical areas.
54:17
Did you,
54:19
look into the there's this thing called, a Mayo Clinic,
54:24
executive, what's called a Mayo Clinic executive. I I afraid exactly what it's called, but have you seen this where you pay, executive health program, you pay ten thousand dollars and you go to a Mayo Clinic and they have five of them or six of them. And you basically spend two days, I think, or three days, and they look at everything up your body and try to diagnose anything. I mean, have you seen this? Yeah. I looked at doing that. And what did why didn't why didn't you?
54:47
Well, I started looking into it, and what I realized is that they were just gonna recommend the same thing that I already looked Right? When I talked to I think I talked to a doctor and you said, oh, yeah. You're probably gonna have to have this special surgery,
54:59
which is, like, they they do, like, a surgery on your throat to close it off from acid. And I'm like, holy crap, thank God it didn't do that. That has like a million knock on effects and all sorts of issues.
55:10
Why wouldn't this work?
55:12
Well, I think the hard part would be is it insured? Maybe not. So you're paying out of pocket.
55:19
How many people really want this? Is this just something like some rich people want or is this a real opportunity? And then also, like, just how much can you charge for it I think it could be a great business for one person. It could be a great business for ten people. Maybe it can scale. I don't know.
55:35
I like personally, I like the pregnancy health one more. I think the other one is more just something that's needed, especially around
55:42
if you specialized in, like, cancer or something. So it's like when you're
55:46
dad gets diagnosed with cancer. There's like a clear person to talk to who's like an adviser who's impartial.
55:53
Can we
55:55
I'm just going through this. I think it's interesting. I think that this is
56:00
it's I sometimes I'm partial these, like, rich people ideas. Aren't you? Like, I'm like I'm like, it's cool, but I don't know if I wanna do that.
56:08
I think it's it's one of those things that is probably
56:12
a business, but it goes back to, like, we have a warped view of it. It got and and, you know, we'll talk about the enough money stuff later, but I think the interesting thing that seems to happen, the theme I see with people who make good amounts of money and become comfortable is they just make themselves uncomfortable again by obsessing over all the stuff that can go wrong. Like, getting, you know, health issues, car accidents, you know, how can how can it all get taken away exactly?
56:37
Let's talk about that. So you wrote something here that immediately caught AI. And it's something that I I've been reading over and over again. It's called what is enough money.
56:45
And,
56:46
well, you and I talked about this recently. Basically, I told you
56:50
the goal when I started the hustle was by around thirty.
56:55
I wanted to make enough money that right up front,
56:58
like my nut would very passively spit off fifty thousand dollars a month in per per perpetuity. So fifty k or the equivalent with,
57:08
including inflation
57:10
every single month forever.
57:12
And to do that, you need, like, you want, like, between two to three percent of your portfolio to be able to do that. So what's the I don't know what whatever that do that math. That that's that minimum. But that was my goal. And,
57:24
yeah, I mean, I I I I did it.
57:27
And
57:28
do you start talking to me about what is enough money? So what what were you gonna say here?
57:33
Yeah. I mean, I I loved you came back to me and you just said, like, to me, enough money is, like, twenty five to fifty k a month in perpetuity
57:41
with very low. I I I said fifty. And the reason I said fifty is I spend way less than
57:46
that. But I want it to be incredibly conservative. Yeah. So you go on a vacation and be crazy and not worry about it. Yeah. Or I think that's the right That's the right way to think about it. I think the problem is a lot of people go, I wanna be a billionaire or whatever, and it's like, well, what do you really want? It's like, well, I really just wanna be able to, like, do whatever I want every month. And let's be honest, fifty k a month, even twenty five k a month is enough to do whatever you want for the rest of your life. And so people
58:11
often will ask me, like, Oh, what do you, you know, what do you aspire to be or who do you admire most? And I think, like, money is, like, I I use the, like, the athlete thing, the example, before, of, like, Olympic athletes.
58:24
I think, like, billionaires are, like, Olympic athletes, but let's be real. Olympic athletes many of them have no personal life because all they do is train and they destroy their bodies by the time they're forty five. Right? And so the people I actually really admire, I admire those. Sorry. I admire. I'm impressed by those people. I love their dedication. I love that they do that, but I don't know if I personally want to
58:46
work that hard or become an Olympian, I think what I aspire to be is to be the casual tennis player who is always challenging themselves, loves playing, plays with friends, all that kind of stuff. And so if you think about it from that perspective,
59:00
the people I'm jealous of are the people who have ten to twenty five million dollars in a conservative
59:05
passive investment. They've paid off their house, and they're just set. And they have a great balanced lifestyle.
59:11
I I love that kind of stuff. And I don't know if I'm I think I'm too much of a maniac. I think, like, I'm too anxious
59:17
and I always want to do more and more and more. I have a lot of fun with that. But so it's hard for me to stop, but those are the people that I'm jealous of. There's a lot to unpack there. First of all, if you're jealous, why don't you do that? That's a good question. I just don't think my personality is is really suited for that. Right? I I always I always want as soon as I have, like, freedom, I fill my self up again. Right? And I'm trying to crack that right now of, like, what's driving that? Is that fear?
59:44
Is it anxiety? Is it just that I love doing this? I don't know. I mean, it's easy. I got the same thing. It's insecurity.
59:52
Like, you wanna it's all it's rooted in a fear of am I good enough to do it? Like, I want to come in in its ego as well. I think it's it's I have to prove that I'm better than Bill Ackman or whoever it is, like, you're at the I don't I don't have that. No. I don't I don't feel that. What I feel is, like, it's more
01:00:10
it's more fun new things. And what I've realized about COVID is, like, I hated working this year because all it was was the work. What I actually love is just like, meeting new people. Right? It's like it's just an excuse to, like, meet new people and solve fun problems. And I know that sounds very kumbaya, but for me, it's very true. Without I all this work and all this more stuff is meaningless to me if I'm not, like, hanging out with cool interesting people and learning new things and making new friends. That's all I care about. And so, like, starting the news business even, like, that was an opportunity for me to be like, oh, who are journalists? I get to, you know, get to know journalists who live in this whole other world outside of business. Where they care about totally different things, and I can, like, nerd out on this new topic and make a whole group of new friends. What would happen if you just turned off your phone or changed your phone number and not opened your computer ever again and never read your email for like a year. What do you think would happen if you did that and you came back to tiny? I think I'd be fine. Right? We just did this a tiny. We changed. We don't get monthly reports anymore from the CEOs. So, like, there's businesses where I don't I haven't even talked to the CEO for, like, three or four months. I don't even know what their numbers are. And what we've realized is that when you leave people alone and trust them, usually good things happen, and the more involved we get the worse the businesses do.
01:01:26
You have a cool quote here. Most successful people are just walking anxiety disorders harness for productivity.
01:01:33
I completely agree. I think there's this
01:01:36
I I had some a friend was telling me about this book. I'm gonna read, but basically they said something like a lot of great leaders
01:01:44
who we look up to have horrible personality
01:01:47
disorders, you know, or horrible, flaws
01:01:50
So for example, JFK,
01:01:53
was was addicted to a pain killer because he was, he had a lot of issues and he was addicted to drugs.
01:01:59
Ave Lincoln.
01:02:01
He tried to kill himself a couple times and he was very suicidal and he had horrible depression. Same with Theodore Roosevelt. Horrible depression. His,
01:02:08
wife and his newborn daughter died on the same day.
01:02:12
He had a he he was very sad and but these types of personalities
01:02:17
are really good during wartime.
01:02:20
They're good because it gives them they're like a dog that has to chase a car,
01:02:25
and they feel comfortable in that in that mode. And when I see you saying,
01:02:31
that you have to do the next thing and also that successful people are a walking,
01:02:36
anxiety disorder. I agree with you. I think that that is true. But then I also say to myself, then why would I feel bad about chasing things all the time?
01:02:45
Like, why would I say, like, well, the most successful people are just at ten to twenty years sitting and I just feel guilty about wanting to do shit all the time. I'm like, well, because I'm just a a guy and I'm built to go and do this shit because of how my brain is built, and that is just who I am, and I will not feel guilty for that. Yeah. You're like a golden retriever and you like to chase balls, and nothing is gonna change that in your brain unless maybe you take, like, some drug or something like that. Yeah. So, yeah. I don't think it's I don't know if it's bad, but it's more like the, you know, I envy the people who could slow down, but I don't necessarily know that I want that. I don't know if I could deal with that. Right? Like, I love my ideal day is actually, like, meeting a whole bunch of people and looking at a bunch of problems and looking at a bunch of different businesses
01:03:27
as well as
01:03:28
family and friends and exercise.
01:03:30
But if you take away the work part, I don't really do very well. I kinda need three, four hours of work every single day. And,
01:03:38
so I think there's just this natural
01:03:40
in and yang of, like, you know, I over get overwhelmed, and then I scale down, and then I have white space, and then I immediately scale back up because I'm like, oh, I have white space. I can do more stuff.
01:03:51
What about, this photo booth business?
01:03:54
So that I I was gonna talk about, like, someone who I really admire, and this is just this is genius. So I met this guy probably
01:04:01
five or six years ago,
01:04:03
really interesting local serial entrepreneur,
01:04:06
And,
01:04:08
he has this business that's a passport
01:04:10
photo booth. Right? And in Victoria, there's a passport
01:04:15
office It's in the mall. There's only one of them. He has the passport photo office right outside or sorry. The passport photo place right outside the Canadian passport thing. So as people walk in and they go, oh, shit, I need a passport photo, he's got the booth right there. Right? And I was just like, that is a freaking amazing business.
01:04:34
It spits out, like, I don't know how much, but, you know, a good life for him. And it just creates this base for him. And I was like, that's the ultimate. And this guy, he has, like, three or four businesses,
01:04:46
but he also just, like, mountain bikes and surfs all the time and seems to, like, do it every once. Right? This guy. And he's always giving me shit. Being like, dude, come surfing with me, like, why aren't you out enjoying life and stuff.
01:04:57
And, really, really interesting guy, but it's just an example of, like, the kind of people who I'm, like, oh, you've, like, you hacked it. You've figured it out. You've got enough, and you're always doing enough interesting stuff that you're active, but you also find time to do, like, whatever the hell you want for three, four hours a day. Why do you have a personal scorecard? But what is this?
01:05:16
So Chris and I, like, I would say COVID, like, hit us super hard over the winter. We were so busy. We took that company public. Like, it was just an exhausting year. And we were like, we need a personal scorecard to do. We try and do this, like, once a month or so. Where we just sit down and ask ourselves these questions. And if enough of them are negative,
01:05:36
then we'll be like, okay, we gotta change something. So some of them are like,
01:05:40
You know, when you're with your kids, are you present? Are you taking your kids out for one on ones at least twice a month? Have you had any calls in the last week that you would just not wanna do? Have you had more than two hours of calendar scheduled time per day? Are you reading interesting books? You proud of your body, you know, just like basic stuff that encompasses your life. And, it's been really, really interesting and useful
01:06:04
to just force yourself to ask those questions because so often the answers are no. Looking at this, so whenever you come on, you send me this huge document. This document, I contributed a little bit to it, but a lot of it's yours. It's two thousand words. Did you write this? What the hell are you serious?
01:06:19
It's eighteen it's eighteen or nineteen.
01:06:22
Jesus. That's crazy. Did you write this? Yeah. Yeah. I I didn't write the the research on the billy of the week. I I wrote the rest. That's crazy.
01:06:31
Yeah. So
01:06:32
we're gonna save this, and we're gonna have to come back and talk about it all because We also asked people on Twitter. So we got a bunch of questions about Metalab,
01:06:40
Billy Metalab in India. Of course, we got tons of newsletter questions. We got tons of tax questions, which is kind of an one. And then, of course, we get the same question of, like, what would you do if you started now?
01:06:50
We'll we'll actually answer them next time.
01:06:52
So, hopefully, we can record on Tuesday. I don't know if you're available. But, when your your episodes are some of the most popular,
01:06:59
this month, we're gonna cost six hundred thousand downloads. And, you're a big part of that. Thank you. This is fun. I always love having you here because I feel like when we talk,
01:07:08
I'm more of a fan than a co host.
01:07:11
Dude, I love
01:07:12
I just love coming on because I it's not like you guys have such a unique format, and it's so awesome to see you guys actually, like, getting huge. Right? Like, I feel like I I remember listening to you guys, like, two years ago, and you're like my only podcast subscription, basically.
01:07:27
So it's awesome to see you getting so big. It's wicked.
01:07:30
Yeah. Last week, we are ranked fourteen. The goal by the end of the year was top ten. I think that we're we're cracking the code. I think there's a world
01:07:40
where when you think of, like, business podcast, it'll be, like, of course, like, Jocko because he's, like, up there. It'll be Tim Ferris because he's been the best for a while. And then there's Guy RAS. He's been the best for a while, but I think there's a world where we're gonna be up there,
01:07:52
in a very short amount of time, and I'm excited for that. And you're part of it. So, like, as we as our podcast gets bigger because you're the most popular guest. So are you?
01:08:01
Awesome. No. I I love doing these so fun.
01:08:04
Awesome. Did well, let's do, yeah, next week. Let's do an AMA or whatever. And
01:08:08
we should get Sean on and do do a full on AMA. We're gonna I'm gonna ask him. His baby's just now old enough where,
01:08:15
maybe he's he's he is in his life back. Yeah. He's getting his life back. So we're gonna do it. Sean and I are in Austin on June third, and then Miami, June fourth, and then you wanna come and travel and do some shit with that. So I just did the Canadian border. I've got a mandatory fourteen day quarantine
01:08:30
but they're gonna reopen soon. So once it's reopened, I'd love to do a live. Great. We already have it all lined up, and,
01:08:37
daddy HubSpot will will foot the bill. And we're good to go. Open bar. Alright?
01:08:43
Thank you, Andrew. This is awesome.
01:08:50
I feel like I could root a word. I know I could be what I want to.
01:08:55
I put my all in it like my days off on a road less travel a looking back
00:00 01:09:02