Encarta | 3 Profitable Business Ideas From A Private Equity Guy

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Mobile,

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podcast and video studio. Buy, like, a few vans, get them out with, like, a pretty fire setup. In the back of, like, a normal sized van, it doesn't even have to be an RV for, like, two to three people could fit deck it out with, like, a few good DSLR cameras that can do the recording, like, dual camera set you have, like, a few mics hanging off the sides, and basically go and post it up in a couple of major cities, like one van in each major city and rent it out for, like, five hundred bucks for two hours to do podcast recordings or, like, you know, a couple hundred bucks to do, like, people going in and filming Instagram shorts, TikToks, shit like that. Like if you put one in LA and you put one in New York City, I bet you could kill it.

00:45

What's going on? Who's who's the guest, Sean? We got Sotto here. The man who answers the question, what would happen if Sean was better looking, smarter

00:53

harder working. So I hope Bloom is here.

00:56

Definitely not smarter.

00:59

Yeah. But don't dispute those other two.

01:03

In with you. So what's up, guys? Happy to be here. How often do you get your haircut? Let's start with the most important question.

01:10

You know, Like, every other week at this point. Now my wife is making fun of me for this because, like, it used to be that I'd go once a month, wasn't a big deal. And now I'm going, like, every other week because I like to keep it tight, and she keeps giving me shit because we have a little newborn at home. And I'm, like, oh, I gotta go. I gotta go.

01:26

So, yeah, it's become an issue. If you don't call it a hair appointment, that's the only thing you can't do. If you say I got a hair appointment, then you're out as a guy. Place just can't be called a salon. That's always been my rule. It's easy to be barbershop. You seem like you seem like a salon guy though. First, like, you've been here. You're wearing, like, you got, like, a werther sweater on. You look like you're getting ready for Christmas. It's like, it's eighty five degrees in Austin, Texas today. Yeah. Are we are we at your, like, book reading for your reading book right now, Sam? What are you doing? Actually does look like you should have a fireplace in the background, and you're gonna be, like, reading us nice stories and a soothing voice. I'm definitely drinking tea right now. So basically,

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like, your bio is pretty easy. You were a nobody private equity guy, the pandemic hit,

02:08

the pandemic hit, and you're, like, I'm gonna be somebody. In a matter of two years, you got famous on Twitter. What do we what do we have nine or eight hundred thousand followers? So you got famous on Twitter and basically transformed your life all because of Twitter and COVID.

02:22

Is that right?

02:24

I mean, the nobody private equity guy designation is not unreasonable.

02:29

I mean, that's, like, I I think that's totally fair. I mean, there's a lot of nobody, like, finance guys that are making bank out there, though. Right? Like, That would've that would've stung, but now you're, like, famous and stuff. So now it's okay to to laugh at it. I mean, I don't know. Like, do do you think it stings? Like, if you're making pretty good money doing something like that, I mean, VPs and private equity at this point, if you're doing well, like, you're making seven figures as a VP in private equity.

02:52

Name four of them.

02:53

Yeah.

02:54

What about, dude, I hung out with some pee guys the other day, and I didn't know them well enough, but obviously I just in the back of my head.

03:02

How rich are you? And that's, like, just what I wanted to keep asking, are if you own a PE shop, is it safe to assume that you're just wealthy and how much do they actually earn?

03:11

Yeah. I mean, if you are

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if you are a GP, so, like, one of the principal owners of a private equity fund, and you've been doing it, like, across multiple funds that have performed well over a period of time, it's pretty safe to assume that you've got a net worth north of fifty million dollars.

03:27

Because, I mean, you just, like, simple math on it. Right? Most of those funds are taking, like, one and a half to two percent management fees on

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you know, if you're running a big fund, five hundred million plus, a billion plus if it's, like, a real substantial fund. So there's,

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you know, twenty million plus coming in a year on a billion dollar fund.

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And realistically, most of them don't have that many employees, so they're not having to actually pay out a ton of that in terms of, like, you know, operating costs. And then you have carry, and they're taking, you know, fifteen, twenty, twenty five percent,

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of profits above their hurdle rate, whatever that is, eight percent. So you're like, you know, you're talking about if they double the funds,

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there's two hundred million dollars plus of carry to go around. And so the principal owners of those are taking the lion's share of that is how much.

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I mean, if there's two hundred million and their principal owner owns twenty, thirty percent of that, it's a shit ton of money. And

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the I think that I've always I can't decide if it's jealousy because I'm like, you guys are making a lot of money for what feels like not a lot of work or if it's actually I dislike them because I feel

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as though they're just like excel sheet monkeys and they're like not actually creating value. What where's the reality?

04:34

No. I mean, they work crazy hard, man. I I don't,

04:37

I don't know anyone that is a long time GP,

04:41

in private equity that doesn't work you know, seventy plus hours a week of, like, stressful work. I mean, it's the type of thing Sean would absolutely hate. Like, you think about, like, people that care about leverage on their time. It's, like, pretty piss poor leverage and it's high stress work because you're putting a bunch of debt on these companies typically. And, you know, during a downturn, like, right now, right?

04:59

It's hugely stressful because you're constantly dealing with, like, breaking covenants on the debt and having to restructure and, you know, like, basically what ends up happening is you spend eighty percent of your time on the, like, couple of losers in the portfolio. And the winners, you just, like, kinda get to set and forget it because they're growing. They're, you know, you're getting, like, a levered upside on them because you put, you know, seventy percent leverage to buy the company, sixty percent leverage to buy the company. And you're just, like, eating off those couple of winners, but you're dealing constantly with the ones that are losers. So Sean and I have our hand in this world where, like, we've definitely sell and have sold courses and information stuff. We also have a podcast And so that that that's like this like personality world, but then we also have built, nice sized companies, and we will continue to build

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very likely much bigger companies. And so we have our foot in that world.

05:46

For you, you have your foot in, like, the PE world as well as the thing that we're in this information thing. Where do you think

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do you think that one

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do you think that the information world or whatever we call this thing is actually a is it an equal

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revenue or net worth driver as, like, some of the traditional company building or PE stuff?

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Yeah. I mean, like, I think

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You have to think about it in terms of, like, your, you know, profit potential multiplied by, like, the freedom and time freedom that comes with it, right, to, like, get to, like, kind of an adjusted it that you can generate from something.

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Doing it in PE and, like, making fifty million dollars in P from a time adjusted standpoint is a is a pretty grindy way to go do it. It's like high certainty if you're just on if you're at a good fund and you're rolling with a good fund and you're, like, gonna be a partner there and you're gonna get more and more carry across you know, bigger and bigger funds, it's a pretty low beta way to go and generate that type of, you know, that type of net worth. But gonna be working your ass off until you're, like, sixty years old doing it versus, you know, you go on the information side, into the information economy and you're, like, doing newsletter, doing podcast, courses, stuff you guys are doing where you're like, you know, Sean might do his course and in a week, make three hundred k, and then be able to chill for, you know, two, three months if he wants to. Because who cares. Right? It's like it's just a totally different time leverage.

07:06

So I don't know. It's it's sort of depends on, like, what you wanna do in that regard. Dude, what's your what's your job now? I mean, I kinda do, like, ten different things.

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I've got the fund, you know, like, so I ended up raising the fund. I didn't do the rolling fund to Sean, but I've got a ten million dollar venture fund that I raised from, you know, a handful of institutions and then a bunch of, like, the GPUs as big funds invested in it and basically, like, kinda share deal flow.

07:31

I've got the newsletter, which, you know, monetizes. It's like, well, we could talk about it. But, like, know, with newsletter sponsors now, it's a hundred twenty five ish thousand subs. And, you know, it makes anywhere from, like, three and a half to six thousand dollars per send right now. And I send it you know, eight to ten times a month. So,

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you know, pretty nice just, like, business that scales to your point on, like, time leverage. I write the same two newsletters a week, and it's pretty nice business. And then I had this agency business that, frankly, like,

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started

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just because it was, like, something that I saw as an arbitrage opportunity early in, like, twenty twenty one, and it ended up scaling into, like, you know, order of magnitude, probably, like, close to six figures a month,

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gross revenue business with super high margins. And so I kinda just, like, kept doing it and kept walking into different areas with it. And I don't know if you guys talked about this already, but you had come to us or you were kinda talking on our group chat about, like,

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the fork in the road moment you had. You were

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Like we said before, no name private equity guy,

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making good money. And you had started

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tweeting out stuff pretty regularly, I would say, I don't know, six months or a year before that.

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And you you it was clear you had moment. It was clear you were good at that. You were getting followers, maybe had a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand followers, maybe at that time, I'm just rounding around.

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And, but it wasn't you didn't have all these other things. Like, this clear. Like, I have a fund. I have a newsletter that makes money. I have an agency that makes money. So you didn't know exactly what was on the other side of that hill, and you were debating I do? Should I, you know, the the fork in there a lot of people have, should I stay in my job? That's a good cushy job or should I,

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take this leap of faith into the unknown

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Give us, like, the two minute story of, like, you know, how did you think about that and how did you decide? And was that the right way to think about it? Yeah. I mean, I,

09:14

Like, a lot of people had the, like, COVID moment of what the fuck am I doing with my life?

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And, you know, am I happy doing it? Like, you know, all of a sudden, for the first time in my life, after, I guess, it had been six years working in in private equity, which at the time, you know, it was like eighty to a hundred hour weeks. Right? So you don't really have time to look up. You don't think about shit because you're just working and you're you're making more and more money until you're, like, patting yourself on the back. Things are good. You're, you know, you're Indian Sean. Like, Indian mother thinks it sounds impressive. Things are good. She probably wants you to go get an MD, but it sounds pretty good.

09:45

Is that what your mother wanted you to do, Sean?

09:48

My mom yeah. She was yeah. Yeah. That that all those things. She she definitely was like, don't leave a good paying job. That was just like a general rule.

09:57

Or general rule of thumb? I mean, my mom to this day still asks me why I didn't go to medical school or why I didn't get a PhD.

10:05

In all seriousness. Like, the the Indian mother thing is sort of a meme, but it's also very real. The, like, you know, you should go work for McKinsey if you're gonna work in, in professional services. Only place that is, that's respectable.

10:17

But, yeah, man. I mean, I was doing that. COVID hit. All of a sudden, I was like, ah, what am I doing with my life?

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Had time on my hands to actually, like, think about other stuff for the first time in my professional life. And so I started I mean, the Twitter thing, I just, like, I started writing, And I didn't ever think of it as a potential way to, like, go make money or get another job or do something else. But as it started to grow and as it started to spiral, we were in this, like, group chat together. Right? And I started seeing

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friends from the tech world, how they were leveraging,

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you know, platforms, Twitter, etcetera, to make money. I was like, I wonder whether there's a way that I can actually,

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you know, build like a little side hustle with this. You know, like, whether it was courses or whether it was an agency business or, like, whatever it was. I never really thought about the fund or investing side at the time.

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And then candidly, like, I had a conversation with you, Sean, that I remember being really impactful where I was, like, at a real crossroads, and I thought I was gonna

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I thought I was gonna kinda just, like, go join another type of investing firm, and we were gonna move back to the East Coast to be closer family. I was gonna do that. And I remember you saying to me, Like, it sounds like you're just gonna go do the thing that kinda sounds like it sucks instead of doing the thing that you actually get a lot of energy from, which is all this new stuff and that feels scalable. And that you're, you know, you're fired up about, so why are you making that decision? And until someone just reframed it for me like that, I had never thought about it. I was just gonna, like, continue down the path that felt safe

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And so it was like a stupid conversation, frankly, but had a pretty big impact.

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You had described it. You were like, I'm thinking about path a or path b, but the way you described it path a sounded like shit. Like, sounded super hard and not that much fun. And Path b sounded like a lot of fun with just like, you know, some unknowns, but, like, definitely good was gonna come of it. And I was like, How is this even a a decision? Like, it sounds like you're saying I'm choosing between a bad option and a good option. Go with the good one. Funny story about Path a. So at the a time. That path a, this is real, was to join, like, a crossover hedge fund, like, a hedge fund that also does investments in private tech companies. And my final interview my final interview, I had to pitch a stock, and the stock they gave me to pitch was stitch fix. And I had to decide Like, I had a week, and I had to decide whether it was a buy, you know, or or a short. Like, if it was a long or a short. And I did, like, a week of research, like, made this long deck, like, did all this work. I mean, it was miserable. Did all this thing. It was trading at the time at, like, forty six dollars. And it had come off, you know, it had gone up to, like, a hundred in the whole, like, archagos, you know, Bill Huang was, like, pumping up stocks by doing, like, buying the swap, pumped all the way up, and then it came down to forty six. And I pitched it as a buy.

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Got rejected because my pitch was shitty. And now that stock is trading three dollars and fifty six cents. So I would have taken Path a and I would have gotten fired within six months for sure. Dude,

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so something that's interesting is, like, I get and I know Sean does too. I get

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asked maybe five times a week if someone can, like, write tweets for me or, like, cut videos for me and all this stuff. And it's pretty crazy. I don't know if it only happens, like, what the popularity level is where you have to where you start getting those inbounds,

13:19

But I get it's so often that I get this. And you like, it's go oh, there's like this weird I get people asking me all the time to go, are you Sahil, or are you in this person, are you in that person to Sahil friends with this person? Because there's this like weird

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circle jerk of a Twitter world, and it feels feel as though that like you are connected to like many, many, many tens of millions of followers and reach

13:45

and, like, there's this, like, weird behind the scenes thing going on with your agency. It's the dark underground cabal that runs Twitter? No.

13:54

No. I mean, Sean, you actually remember this. Right? Didn't, like, some kid hit you up and say that he ghost wrote tweets for me. And then you you just texted me and were like, does this dude ghost ride for you? And I was like, no. I've never heard of this kid in my life. He was just lying. And then I hit him up saying, like, yeah, why are you lying to this person? And he completely panicked.

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But, yeah, man. I mean, the, like, the world of of ghost writing tweets has now become,

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again, like, it's become a meme because, oh, is it, like, business insider road in article about VCs, getting, getting ghost writers to write tweets for them. That wasn't at all how my agency thing started. It started

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in, like, late twenty twenty because I had started to figure out that threads were the way that people were growing on Twitter. And keep in mind, like, you know, Sean, you were around the group chat at the time, but that was like before threads had become the, like, thread boy meme that they are today. And so there was like legitimate arbitrage in writing quality threads. And I had all these startups that I had invested in. The founders of which were like, wow, we see a ton of value in having a platform and a brand. Can you help us think through to do this because you've done it. Like, I had, at that point, gotten to seventy five thousand followers or so. And so I was, like, yeah. Let me, you know, I basically, like, started an LLC like an advisory business, basically. And I started giving, like, strategic support to these startups on how to think about content. And then, like, how much would you charge them? I was charging five grand a month,

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to a startup for basically, like, you know, it was, like, texting and then maybe, like, one call every other week. And it was, like, so low because, it was so low on time from what they needed from me because it was mostly, like, the founders didn't wanna actually spend a ton of time on it. They just wanted to be able to, like, kind of understand it, and then they would have people on their end that just, like, went off and did things with it. And what was the high level, like, one, two, three bullet points that you would tell these founders so that they could just be better at this? It was basically, like, you need your two or three pillars of content that you're going to be able to talk about consistently

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that are, like, valuable for you as a startup or as a founder. So if you're a founder I mean, at the time, it was, like, If you're a founder, talk about, you know, building companies and things you're learning along the way, which now is, like, ultra saturated on Twitter. Right? There's like a million people that aren't necessarily credible writing about that. At the time, there weren't that many founders doing it. Like, I don't know if you guys have seen the, like, copy AI founder. I forgot his name, Paul. It might be investor, Sean. You know that business. Samus. Not me. I don't. Yeah. And he was, like, the first one sort of that was, like, really building in public, quote unquote, like, sharing about their journey and the things they were learning. So I was basically telling founders,

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you have to establish, like, what are your two or three pillars that you're gonna be writing about? Maybe it's building in public, maybe it's the industry you're in,

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you know, maybe it's like sharing l's along the way and like vulnerability because people find that endearing. It's like, It's called the Prattfall effect. Have you ever heard of that? It's like,

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when when people who you perceive to be perfect, show, like, chinks in their armor, we find it as humans endearing, and we it actually makes us like them more. And so you're, like, you know, playing on that. You're, like, sharing your l's all in the way.

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But I was basically telling them you know, versions of that on a regular basis and, like, helping, you know, kind of craft and advise them on the content they were putting out. And it was like five grand a month.

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Probably had, like, five or so clients.

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I think they were all, like, startups. I either, like, the founders I knew or I had invested in the companies. And so I was kind of around and it was, you know, beneficial to me to, like, see them continue to grow and do that. So you, like, invest in the companies and they give you that money right back. I like that. It was a good way to hedge them. I mean, this was personal investments at the time. So this was like, you know, I might invest like twenty five k in a company. And if I was making that back in five months, that was a pretty good cash on cash return on the original investments.

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But then, like, you know, like, after,

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you know, the ghost writing thing, was interesting because basically, like,

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early mid twenty twenty one,

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I had a few of those clients come and say, like, the biggest struggle for us is that we don't have people that can write this content. Like, we don't wanna build out a content team when we're focused on product and engineering and all that stuff. Like, do you have people that can write? And right at that time, I had done the course with Julian Shapiro, our friend.

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We did a Maven course on, like, how to build your audience And it was mainly how to build your audience on Twitter. And so half that course was about, like, how to write good threads and how to write for Twitter. And so I had this pool of, like, for a hundred

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students who had gone through the course, learned the principles of it, knew how to do it, that then I was just able to sort of be a connector between, like, freelance you know, writing talent to then support these startups. And, you know, the the kind of fundamental to any agency business for anyone that's starting one is effectively that you're, like, creating price arbitrage where you're, like, charging a client ten grand for some or five grand for something that maybe costs you two. And, like, you know, the reality for most of these people is you can pay a thousand to twenty five hundred bucks a month, maybe, depending on the output, and you can easily charge, you know, a start up or a brand five for that, or you can charge, like,

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you know, a a founder or an entrepreneur who's doing really well and just made a bunch of money, five for just like the fact that you're the connector between the two points. So that was when it, like, I would say, like, really started to scale, but it was never for VCs for me. Like, I've never I mean, I've never had a client that was a VC. It's it's all been founders and it's all been, like,

19:08

like half tech founders and half just like nuts and bolts, like meat and potato type founders, like Sam's guys.

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What? Your guys?

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Wait. If I have meat and potato guy, or you're not in a pool guy? No. You're a meat and potato guy. Sean's my tech. You're my meat and potatoes guy. You know, if something's like cool or interesting, then it's kinda more my thing. And it's something like really boring and, like, you know, generally correlate with, like, obesity. It's your thing.

19:38

So so I I wanna ask you a bunch about, like, kinda your your big vision because you're gonna be president someday. I don't know if people know this. There's a future president sitting with us. But before we do that, people always tell us they're like, yo, you gotta do ideas with the guests. Meaning, they wanna hear, okay, you're subtle. You see a bunch of different things. You see a bunch of different worlds.

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What opportunities do you see that you think some somebody should be doing or a cool startup idea, a cool business idea, a niche opportunity, something maybe you're not doing or whatever? Do you have any kind of ideas on your cheat sheet? Yeah. I've got three for you guys. Okay. Good. Let's go through them. So so first on the agency side, just because I think there are two really obvious ones that, like, Honestly, anyone that's listening could probably go action on this if they wanted. One is,

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like, LinkedIn

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growth agency stuff.

20:24

Massive opportunity here. I mean, like, you you you guys know a couple of our friends. Me and a couple of friends are starting, like, a spin off agency that's just gonna focus on LinkedIn because it's a massive arbitrage opportunity right now in audience growth. Twitter has become a lot more saturated because of the like thread boy thing and how many people are going and doing it. LinkedIn, like, you I mean, you can go post a few things and immediately be, like, getting the ten k plus. And for founders and, like, business builders,

20:49

There's so much business on those platforms. It's huge for recruiting. So, basically, if you were to go start this, the way I would do it, I would go, like, go to someone who has a Twitter presence,

21:00

and you can go create, like, tweet pick,

21:03

p I k is the, like, web service that I use for it. And you can basically just turn tweets that are like proven with social proof into these, like, carousels on LinkedIn that are the big growth hack on LinkedIn.

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And if you go do that for them and just say, like, look, I'll take over your entire LinkedIn presence. You never have to open LinkedIn because people hate opening LinkedIn.

21:23

And you just go and create carousels for them off of proven tweets and then go post it for them, like, two, three times a week. Off their tweets?

21:31

Yeah. Off their tweets,

21:34

off their tweets or off of, like, other writing that exists that they've put out. Like, say they've written blogs, like, I don't know. Mean, if you went and found,

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you know, say it's like Ryan Holiday, and he's written a ton of blogs that are all over the place, but doesn't have a massive LinkedIn presence, you can go, turn his blogs into just shorter form writing that you put into posts on LinkedIn

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and say, hey, I'm gonna I'll post for you three times a week you never have to log in. Don't even worry about it, and we'll grow you to, like, fifty k by the end of this year. Either pay as, like, you know, charge as, like, a success fee. Like, if you get to this level, you pay me this, or you just say, like, pay me five grand a month and I'll do this for you, two and a half grand a month and I'll do this for you. And the amount of time it would take you is literally, like, I mean, you could probably

22:14

do, like, an hour a week to cover a a single person to, like, you know, call it four hours a month and make five grand. It's, like, an an awesome, awesome arbitrage opportunity. So that's one. Like it? Any thoughts on that, Sam? I think I think it's awesome. Yeah. I'm writing doing a a similar thing. So I I hired this guy as a content remixer for me And, basically, it was take content from the pod or or Twitter

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and, remix it into content on other platforms, and I focused on link I focused him on LinkedIn because I thought But the thing you just said, I had kind of a hypothesis that that's true.

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And,

22:46

I'm now at thirty eight thousand followers on LinkedIn, and I haven't opened LinkedIn once. So if you see something on LinkedIn, it's not me writing it.

22:54

It's me. I mean, the same thing happened to me, but it's not me writing that. But hold on, Sean. So you got thirty thousand. Let's say that you post a product. And by the way, this is like in two months or or something like that. Let's say you post a product that cost or your power running thing. Let's say it's a thousand dollars. And you sell a thousand dollar thing to your thirty eight thousand followers. How much revenue will you make from that? I don't know. Haven't tested it. Tahil, you might know better, but I also haven't been doing for long enough. I wouldn't expect

23:20

to be able to get value because I don't think I've given enough yet. Like, with Twitter, same thing, you know, like, people see, oh, man, you guys just you can sell a course. You can just, like, say you're doing this new thing. You get a bunch of sign ups. It's like, yeah. But but doing this podcast for three years,

23:34

do, you know, three hundred episodes, you know, that hundreds of hours of content that somebody's listened to. So, yeah, they trust you and they know they've come to a decision, whether you're smart and interesting, or whether you're full of shit. And they've used they they've done they've made that that they've done all that work, and I've done all that work beforehand. So then when you bake an offer, it's just a simple yes or no. It doesn't fit their life. Does it does it do they think it'll drive value? They already trust that you could do it. On LinkedIn, I wouldn't bet that that would happen yet because it's just been so,

24:03

recent.

24:04

Yeah. I think you have to get I mean, there's like a

24:07

there's like a low there there's a bar that I think you have to get over from a follower account standpoint if you use that as a proxy before you can, like, conceivably harvest value. You gotta, like, you know, plant enough seeds over a period of time to Sean's point. I think, like, a hundred k is probably the point at which you can start harvesting value from LinkedIn. Justin Welsh is this guy that you might have seen on Twitter or LinkedIn. He was, like,

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kind of, like, godfather, LinkedIn influencer.

24:30

And I think that dude now is making, like, a hundred k plus on not even cohort based courses, just like auto courses that he generally just promotes through LinkedIn. He, like, he has a newsletter now that he's built through LinkedIn, like, built on the back of LinkedIn. And now he's bigger on Twitter because he's managed to, like, cross across all of those. But he's doing over a hundred k a month in, in sales revenue on his, on his courses, which are just, like, you know, they're just they're they're they're not cohort based. So he's putting in no, no time. Dude. Got them stood up. This is interesting. Sean, have you seen what Sahel's been doing on Instagram?

25:02

On Instagram now. I basically

25:05

You're always blowing up. So listen to this. So,

25:08

around the same time. You're just dad content? No. Listen. It was just hair. It's just mostly hair and shirtless pics and, abs. There's traps. But, around the same time so Sahel and I, both around the same time were like, alright. Let's take Instagram seriously. So doing it, and I was beating him nicely, adding a thousand people today. I think I started with five thousand people, and I got to, like, forty eight or fifty thousand in a very short amount of time. And he was doing his thing. I was like, you need to post twice a day, I think. And he starts doing that. And then he just kinda like has rocketed past me. Now he's got to sixty two thousand followers

25:39

in a very short amount of time adding one or two thousand people a day. And he's doing this exact same thing where he's taking his tweets that do well and just posting them on his Instagram. And, like, So two points here. One,

25:51

there's a world where this is just total

25:54

vanity nonsense

25:56

and a complete distraction from people who have, like, their main thing. On the other hand, what I'm curious about is how much rev new can this drive to people if their goal is not to be a famous person, their goal is just to sell more shit of whatever their own they own already. And so I'm curious, Sahel, is a view if well, this does this actually drive revenue for things

26:16

other than even right now?

26:19

Right now, it's generating about a so Instagram this past month, I think, generated a thousand newsletter subs for me just through the link in my bio.

26:28

And that's, like, you know, on average, I probably had thirty five thousand followers,

26:33

during the month, and it generated that many. So conceivably as it continues scale, it'll drive, you know, well north of that as it, as it moves. And if you think a newsletter subscriber for me is worth,

26:43

you know, just off of my sponsor revenue, probably, like, three to four dollars per sub. And then if you take into account my book that's gonna come where it's, like, extremely valuable to me, if they buy a book,

26:55

I mean, it's a bunch of money a month that's coming off this that scales over time. Right? And that's just Instagram. And you think about LinkedIn. That's another big driver.

27:03

Know, all of these platforms. And, like, they're they're ghost writing agencies. They're people selling product mostly on Instagram without ever posting, like, their

27:12

face. These guys are literally like making carousels of images and stuff, and they're doing fifty to a hundred k of revenue through it.

27:19

What's an example of that? There's this guy, Dakota Robertson, like wrongs to right. I think it's his, like, Twitter handle, and maybe that's his Instagram handle too.

27:28

And he's got, like, I don't know, two hundred fifty thousand followers now on on Instagram and, like, blew up real fast there just from posting his viral tweets. Over to over to Instagram. Like, almost never shows his face.

27:40

And dude is re has a thriving ghost writing business through this. Gotcha. I'm torn because on one hand,

27:47

you are, like, perfect execution

27:50

of a strategy that I now hate.

27:52

And so I'm, like, respect to you,

27:55

but I'm like, I don't even wanna talk about this because I know what's gonna happen is there's now gonna be nine thousand new people who go. This podcast is gonna breed

28:03

nine thousand new people that are gonna go be like, this is my thing. I'm gonna do this. He said I can make, you know, x amount of money per month, and their execution is gonna be nowhere near yours.

28:13

And in general, this is like a

28:16

it's like a pathway that definitely works,

28:19

but it's like,

28:20

Like, the soul sucking. The soul sucking. It's, like, the winning opportunities closing,

28:25

and it provides Well, I think the winning security is closing. That's an important point. Yeah. I do think, like, Look, I mean, when I started writing the threads, I mean, Sean, you were the same way. Right? Like,

28:34

any thread you wrote would blow the hell up early on because there just weren't that many of them. And so it was like it took a market. It wasn't and now it's pretty hard to get a thread to, like, really take off unless you're doing the, like, ten YouTube channels that will change your life for free. Yeah. But that's his point, which is the things that it it's like getting fit through power walking. Is power walking gonna burn calories?

28:54

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Are you probably not gonna get injuries? Yeah. But, like, you have to look like a doofus doing it in the process when the neighborhood's gonna know you is that weirdo hour walking. Like, I you know what I mean? And I I'm guilty of this too. Right? Like, I did this strategy as well of being like, oh, I'm gonna create content for for you know, for fun initially. There's podcast, Twitter, that sort of thing. And then, oh, shit. Okay. If I kinda sell five percent of my soul or ten percent of my soul to the algorithm, I think I can get this bigger. Okay. I started doing that. And then it's like, oh, I can make good money doing this. And I, you know, make some money doing that, and that feels fun. But, like,

29:30

I just wanna say as a public service announcement, there's some people who are gonna go do this. But let's say you're somebody who's awesome, I'm just gonna say this now.

29:38

This was awesome to do when it wasn't figured out. Now that it's figured out, this is a certified official small boy stuff, and I do not recommend this anybody else. And I, myself, have stopped doing this too. I haven't posed a thread in in But if you are interested in this lame ass shit silos guys,

29:55

perfect. Execute. That's the difference, though. Anything like, I I've tweeted this I'm sitting in this house because of it. I tweeted this It's a lovely house. It's a lovely house. I could have right No. I mean, look, you do you you have to figure out what the what the area is where you're gonna do it. That's not crazy saturated and cringe. And and to your point, like, you gotta figure out what percent cringe are you willing to be? Like, if writing a thread is ten percent cringe, like, what level above that just natural baseline are you gonna figure that out? Are you talking?

30:25

What? No. I mean, I'm I'm willing to accept that,

30:29

already, like, ten percent of people just immediately see it and they're like, oh, this is super cringe. And then you just have to decide, like, what level you're willing to go above that. If a hundred percent is, like, ten chrome extensions that'll change your life and fifty percent is, like,

30:43

you know, here are, like, the TED Talks that changed my life. What's, like, twenty percent? Is it some of the stuff I post probably And, like, if that helps a few people out there and, like, a bunch of people get pissed and think that it's not for them, I don't really give a shit personally. Like, if I help one person And, you know, someone hits me up and says, like, hey, that changed my perspective on x y or z. That's what Gary V's been doing for decades, man. That guy's a legend putting out content that's, like, listicles and, like, you know, like motivational stuff, Tony Robbins, like, Grant Cardone, these guys, like, they get hate because it freaking works. And it helps people. Right? So I don't know. The thing I the thing I would say, like, have you ever been to a Tony Robbins event? Yeah. And,

31:22

sure if you went to, like, you went to what, like, an unleash the power within or something. Yeah. Great. I went to loved it. Thought it was amazing. I don't know if you liked it. You could give it a quick reaction, but I have a different point.

31:31

I love it. I mean, I love Tony Robin stuff. Me too. And he gets on stage and he's doing all the things that you could criticize somebody for. He's he's clapping. He's saying get up and and jump. He's saying, when I say, you know, he's gonna ask a very basic question and the only answer is yes, but the whole crowd says yes like a cult. And you're like, oh, he's doing all the things. But he's doing it at, like, an a plus plus plus level. He is probably in my opinion, the best public speaker I've ever seen,

31:58

and I've seen a lot. Next to like Obama. Yeah. Yeah. He he is I think he's even more powerful than Obama because Obama is smooth. But Obama doesn't get people Tony Robbins will get you to walk across Coles and, like, shout your greatest fear out loud. I I've never seen Obama control a crowd for twelve straight hours, like Tony Robbins will do it in But here's what happens. You look around in the crowd and you're like, there's a whole spectrum of people. At the one I was in, it was like, there were celebrities there. You know, the the guy from three hundred, what's his name? Gerald Butler, he was there. He was like, right, two rows down from me. I was like, wow, this is interesting. There's some interesting people here. And then In the hallways, that would be a bunch of people that thought they were the next Tony Robbins. And they were life coaches

32:36

and motivational speakers, and they were, you know, changed consultants,

32:40

and every cringe name you could think of. And then you go look at their stuff, and it's the same concept, but not executed at that level. Because they didn't have the hard won life experiences

32:51

that that guy had to actually, like, create this content. They didn't have forty years of sharpening their craft to becoming the best. They didn't have the talents and charisma and, you know, larger than life presence. And so

33:01

you can you can look at the best. You can look at the Gary V's and the Tony Robbins. You can look at you on Twitter and say, That's dope. You know, I could do that. And some people, a very small amount of people can do that, but for most people, they will fall into the pit of cringe because They're not gonna execute it at that same level. They didn't have those hard won lessons of actually knowing what they're talking about. And, and they're gonna end up in this, like, weird middle ground. And, I think that's the scary part.

33:26

I can't find this client info. Have you heard of HubSpot?

33:29

HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data. Every application. Every team can stay aligned. No out of sync spreadsheets or doing databases.

33:38

HubSpot, grow better.

33:41

Mean, that's kind of like, that's like any market though. Right? Like, you know, so someone starts a company and it's the a plus version of some, like, a restaurant chain. Someone starts a restaurant chain. Like, the a plus of that thing. And then a bunch of people come in to try to mimic it, and it's, like, the b plus version and, you know, like, whatever, like, say say in and is the a plus burger version and then someone cut tries to come in and start the, like, five guys or whatever next. I'm probably gonna get hate for saying in and outs better than five guys, but, you know, whatever. Like, you kind of have the diluted versions. And the question is, like, a, do you care that you're the deluded version of Tony Robbins if you're making money doing it and taking care of your family? Because, like, I I know a lot of people that are just like, I don't give a shit. Like, you know, I grew my audience, super cringe stuff, and I'm making twenty five grand a month. I was making five doing my prior job or ten doing my prior job. I'm making this, sitting at home, and I could spend time with my kids. What do I give a shit if a bunch of tech people think that I'm cringe? Like, I'm making money. It is what it is. And so I kind of I appreciate that too. The other thing I would say is, like,

34:38

what game are you playing? Like, what is the long term game you're playing? And for me, I was always thinking about, like, What is the thing I'm trying to build long term? Like, I wasn't trying to be, you know, a Twitter thread, like, the a thread guy. Like, that's not my long term vision of what it was. It vaulted me from being a nobody private equity guy, as you said, to, like, I signed a book deal last month. Like, a big book deal last month you know, like, I raised a fund. I never would have been able to raise a fund as, like, this nobody VP in private equity. And so to me, it's like, what are you actually harlaying that shit into as you continue to go, if you're able to find the thing that you think you're a plus at, even if it's for a short period of time, like, how are you using that to vault yourself into that next level where you're like, I'm not even in the same class as these other guys that are doing the thing I was doing previously because I moved into whatever that next, you know, that, like, upper on is. Dude, are you worried about,

35:27

Elon screwing it up for you?

35:29

Not really. You know, it's funny. Well, Did you see what he really quick? He he, like, said something and then Steph, my old coworker said, like, does this mean that, like, the thread boys are gonna go away? And actually forget his reply. What did he say? Sounded like he was saying that you did like a crying emoji. I mean, yeah, like, I think it was something about he said, you know, you could basically, like, put a long form text onto a tweet. So you don't have to, like, people were used to take a screenshot of, like, their notes app on their phone to post a long form thing. I think all that stuff is good. I mean, like,

35:58

Look, I I've already benefited from being early to a market. Like, I grew to a big level. I built a brand that now extended into things that I own, like, the newsletter, you know, that's gotten quite large and it's growing faster, like, the fund or, like, the book, whatever it is.

36:12

I would be more worried if I was, like, just starting out in any one of these things. And, like, had dedicated all this time. You know, if you've rewound me a year, and I was, like, just starting to get all these things going, I'd probably be a little more worried.

36:24

But the reality is it's, like, eat or be eaten, man. If you're if you're not, like, figuring out the new way to to, you know, be on the front of something and be building in these other areas,

36:34

you're in for a tough time no matter what. Let's talk about this newsletter thing.

36:38

So this is the second idea.

36:41

Biggest issue I have with my newsletter

36:43

36:45

I wanna write it. Like, I I love writing. That's my number one thing that gives me a lot of energy.

36:50

I freaking hate thinking about and dealing with any of the, like, business or growth side of the newsletter. The business side is very easy to outsource. There's, like, I mean, you know, there's there's ad agencies now. ConvertKit has an ad network where they'll manage the whole back end of your newsletter. They'll bring in sponsors for it. They'll send you the money. It's, like, super super easy. It's amazing.

37:09

Nathan crushed it, getting that thing out there.

37:12

But the, like, growth side of newsletters

37:14

is completely untouched. There's no one out there that I've been able to find that is like a full suite growth service for your newsletter. And when I say gross suite, I literally mean, like, I want someone thinking about my landing pages

37:27

and optimizing that. I want someone thinking about referral networks, newsletter swaps. I want someone thinking about paid ads, you know, SEO for my website to drive subs, how to optimize it across my different social channels, literally just someone that's sitting around thinking about growth for the newsletter so that I can just focus on writing And I'd literally be willing to pay. I mean, my willingness to pay at the size of newsletter that I'm at now and given what newsletter subs are worth to me is very high. Like, I would easily pay ten grand a month someone that could figure that out and do it in one place on top of whatever I would spend on paid ads, etcetera. Did you think that that thing work week is gonna do that?

38:00

No. Dude, I mean, like,

38:02

I I don't know how much you guys know about work. I I don't know a whole ton about work week, but from what I can tell, it's mostly the, like, back end services of newsletters. And there's another one called smooth ops that I think spun out from Morning Group. Didn't work work out of the hustle, didn't it? Not spun out. They, they worked for The guy was there. Yeah. Same thing with the morning brew, smooth ops. Like, my understanding of all of those is that they're much more focused on, like, helping you monetize

38:28

and,

38:29

you know, managing your, like, business that you can focus on writing I literally just want someone that just all they think about all day like a a an absolute killer that just all they think about is growth. I mean, Sean, did you have someone, I mean, or was Ben like that at at road. My guy was. Right, Sean? No.

38:44

Ben Ben was the guy. He woke up every day and just said, how do we get more subscribers?

38:48

And, like, you know, that's that was his mission, and that's what he did. So, you know, that's the but, you know, we needed it's like But you don't have a bet. That was like more of a company,

38:56

whereas, like, you know, most people's personal

38:59

things are not like, you're at a size where there's just not that many newsletters that are at your size,

39:05

that can afford to pay for something like that.

39:08

You know, how many people how many people could afford to pay ten k per month

39:12

to try to drive growth? The so I think a lot. So my hypothesis is So I tweeted this. And a bunch of people were, like, replying saying they would pay for it in different ways. My hypothesis is that there's a ton

39:25

of, like, successful founders and entrepreneurs

39:28

that want to build a newsletter, a known list, or, like, an essay type thing like what Sam Altman or Paul Graham have, where they have, you know, SEO and newsletter, you know, like emails that are coming to them, and they're willing to pay a lot because they actually have been successful in a bunch of money. They don't need it to be revenue generating out at the outset.

39:46

And I think you I mean, I bet if you develop some sort of core competency and basically, partnered. Say say someone partnered with me

39:53

and proved it out over, like, two, three months. Hey, drove this. And then we're able to use me as a case study. Maybe I own a percentage of it, you know, on the upside. And so I'm incented to, like, bring them new referrals. I bet you could grow a pretty big business there quickly.

40:06

Yeah. And you only need, like, twenty clients, basically, to make this, like, you know, worth your while. Yeah. I mean, if it's a personal business, you don't even need twenty clients. I mean, get ten at five a month or ten at ten a month, and you have, like, you know, it's eighty eighty plus percent margin, probably business. If you're just running it simple. But are you having the headache of having a service business?

40:26

Yeah.

40:26

I mean yeah. It's definitely not product, guys. Like, I've thought about starting an agency, like, maybe twenty times in my life, and then literally five minutes later every single time, I'm like,

40:35

don't go in the service business. Don't go in the service business. Now I did

40:38

we have several friends that have done it. Right? Like, you know, Andrew will consented it with Metalab, or buddy Greg, just doing a great job with it with late checkout. You're doing it now with your thing. So, you know, maybe I have the wrong bias here. What do you think? Mean, what you have to do is hire a great operator. If you wanna be the, like, owner of some percentage of it and not have the headaches, you gotta just recruit a killer operator who's gonna run of it. I mean, that's what we're doing with the spin out agency that we're doing now around LinkedIn stuff is, like, just gonna hire someone exceptional and give them, like, fifteen percent of the ups and just say, like, you're a hustler, you're a killer. You can get a whole ton of What, man? That was my finance change, man. Never heard

41:16

Really? Oh, that's the that's the that's the no name PE guy coming out of me right there.

41:22

I thought a earlier guy was a guy who likes to leave a Dodge in recess. Like, that's what PE is to me.

41:28

Earlier, he was talking about beta, and I was like, are you talking about nerds? I don't understand what what the hell is beta?

41:34

Beta is good thing. Yeah.

41:36

Hold on. Here's how my beta is, like, a a good thing. I was like, I don't understand what that means. You're kind of a low beta guy, actually. Sam, if I think about it, like, you kinda you kinda, like, even key. Like, I feel like I know within a band what I'm gonna get out of you any any given day.

41:49

I I think you're complimenting me, but I don't I mean, I I I you know, you, like, you show up. You tweeted about that recently. You hate when people say they're gonna do something and then not do it. Like, you so you take pride in being low beta. Like, people know what they can expect from you on a given day. By the way, what a what a stupid thing to tweet. Yeah. Like, I like long walks in the beach and movies. Like, who Who likes somebody who says they're gonna do something and doesn't do it? What an obvious tweet.

42:12

Yeah. First of all,

42:14

give me the clout that I deserve.

42:16

Like, don't hate. What did what did Sahel say? Don't hate. Number two,

42:21

I'm not saying it's like people who say they're afraid of heights. Like, yeah, everyone's afraid of heights, but, like, you just, like, some people that just, like, I, you know, it's like, what's high on your list. Okay. I don't think that,

42:31

I don't know. Like, like, there's a lot of things that annoy you, Sean, that that don't annoy me and vice versa. Like, what's what's one thing that annoy you, Sean, that you don't think a noise, Sam? I don't think anything annoys him. Nothing annoys me.

42:45

I I That's the beauty of it. Wait. Really, you don't think anything bothers you? No. I think yeah. Now I wanna dig into this. Bothers you. I,

42:52

I guess what what bothers me is only usually things with myself So, like, if I find myself

42:57

in a bad mood or, like, getting annoyed with something or getting bothered by something or getting impatient with something, That's actually the thing that bothers me. I'm like, oh, man, I let this get to me. Like, for, like, that second, that's the thing that gets to me. Right? So usually, it's not something that frustrates me or annoys me. It's usually either impatience or boredom

43:14

or,

43:16

feeling cranky or tired or something like that, you know, like, and I'm like, oh, no. Don't wanna be that way. That that bothers me. So for years, I used to say that Sean, I was like, I was like, I think I'm gonna have a pretty steady path to wealth creation. And Sean, you either gonna, like, it's not gonna be as extreme. I think we we joke around with mister Beast. We're like, you know, six out of ten times if you were reborn, you would be a degenerate, like, Gambler or drug addict. And, like, four four out of ten times, you'd be successful with Sean. It it's not that bad, but it's, like, you know, you're gonna you're you're the type of guy who controls the dice and, like, you might actually hit it big. There's a good chance, o, or you might, like, just be only okay for a long time. And now,

43:53

so I was basically saying, yeah, your likelihood, I think of being a billionaire is actually than mine.

43:57

But your likelihood of being, like, a degenerate is probably also higher. Yeah. High beta. Yeah. But here's the problem with Sean. I've just realized over the past handful of months. He is too emotionally healthy

44:09

to probably be incredibly successful. He has this problem

44:14

that few people have, which is he's just happy.

44:17

You know what I mean? He's got this it it's just this mess. It depends on your definition of success, man. I would argue that John's the most successful then, man. If he's, like, super happy. Yeah. If you define sex by success by these superficial things like happiness and well-being and all that bullshit, stupid stuff.

44:33

Yeah. I do. I will say that Sean has had more,

44:37

like, high highs and low lows this year. At least for my, like, perceived

44:41

view of Sean.

44:43

And, like, and he's totally unfazed. Like, Sean, I mean,

44:46

flash back to, like, you know, of, like, crypto crash. Right? I'm like, yo, Sean's down bad. I'm texting Sam. I'm like, is Sean okay? Like, Sean's texting the group totally fine. I'm like, yo, is Sean broke? Like, is Sean doing margin called right now? Like, I have no idea what's going on? And then Sean's like, yo, I sold all my stock.

45:02

And I was like, holy shit. Sean sold the bottom. Sean sold the bottom. Like, markets roaring in June. And then the market crashes again, and Sean's a genius trader that, like,

45:12

sold the top of the market or something. This dude is just like Does that stuff bother you at all, Sean? Like, first of all, what

45:18

prior to selling a business recently, but what, was your network down just a significant amount? Yeah. Probably I mean, it's hard to calculate that sort of thing. So but let's say of the liquid stuff.

45:29

So not counting equity in companies, you know, it's probably down fifty percent or something like that. I mean, most of the investments I I didn't keep much cash. This was my investment strategy pre twenty twenty two. Right? So my best strategy pre twenty two was cash is trash.

45:44

And, you know, fist bumps all around to my boys who thought cash was trash, then,

45:49

oh, dude, is there a safer investment than Amazon?

45:53

This blue chipper. Right? Like, yeah, that's my version of of safety is, yeah, I'm gonna put in some boring tech companies, you know, the the Amazon's, Google's, Facebook's of the world. What could go wrong? And, and then lastly, you know, then, yeah, a huge amount of startups that were, that were, you know, getting marked up like crazy fist bumps all around, getting my ups, getting my ups was going ups. And then the last thing was crypto, and I was like, oh, Well, you see your boy's a genius and moved a huge percentage of net net worth into, you know, Bitcoin and Ethereum.

46:22

And, oh, and then this Luna That's popping. I'm doing great. So, you know, that's that was me before. So, basically, every single thing I had invested in has gone, you know, what's my, you know, there was that thing, like, my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Like, I was basically having that for this year in terms of investments, but

46:38

you know, whatever. Did it bother you? Well, I didn't like losing money, but, like, you know, did I let it bother me? No. Like, you know,

46:45

I basically took steps. No. I took steps. I was like, okay. Well, what matters here? Like, okay. Let me just first get perspective.

46:52

You know, am I in any kind of hardship is my family doing poorly? No. They're they're fine. Right? Secondly, what should I actually do? Do I need to make some adjustments? Was I wrong about certain things? Or should I do some things to give myself more comfort? So why did I sell I sold I basically margin called myself. I was like, you know what? I think things are gonna go lower, and I don't wanna sweat this all the time. So I'm gonna sell this amount here so that I don't have to worry about anything. I'm gonna move more into cash, and I'm gonna book this loss because I think that'll that'll offset against some gains that I have this year. And,

47:21

you know, then I won't have to think about this stuff for a little while. I'll focus on these other things that I wanted to be focusing on because I'm not a trader. I'm not a like investment genius, so that's not gonna be my goal. And then, yeah, then it'll just I don't know.

47:33

Never got my happiness from when it was going up. So why would I get my sadness from when it's going down? It didn't make sense to me. You must have felt good when Luna, like, I think you you originally plugged Luna in Milk Road at, like, forty. And I, like, I bought some. I was, like, yo, Sean's pretty smart. He knows this crypto shit. Hands down. And so I, like, I bought a bag Like, I, you know, I'm not, like, I'm not really a degenerate crypto guy, but I, like, bought a bag of loon, and that shit went up to, like, one eighteen. And I was like, yo, Sean is my god. Like, Sean, what other what other ideas do you have? And then I we were supposed to interview on our old pod. We were supposed to interview Doukwan. Like, I had hit him up on Twitter. He's supposed to come on the pod. On, like, a Thursday.

48:10

And on that Sunday,

48:12

like, Luna had been wavering, like, it had come down to, like, eighty or something. And I get an email from his assistant that just says,

48:19

unfortunately,

48:20

dough will have to reschedule the interview for this Thursday. And I'm sitting in bed, and I'm like, oh, I got a little bit of the heebie Geebies. Like, I don't know what this is. I go downstairs and I sell my entire bag at, like, I don't know, a small gain, like, not not good. I sell the whole thing. Next morning, I wake up and that shit's at, like, five. Like, the whole the whole thing unraveled overnight, and then I get an email from his assistant saying, like, he's gonna have to cancel the interview. And I'm like, yeah, well, this dude has a red notice out for him. No shit he's not coming on our podcast. Point. Yeah. That was that was a bad day. I was on vacation. I was in Hawaii with my family, and I'm watching my and I'm like, I don't even have I'm not even computer. Like, I can't even get to my crypto. Like, it's not like on my laptop or whatever. So I'm like, well,

49:01

couldn't couldn't make a move if I wanted to.

49:04

So I guess I'll just, like, you know, lose all this money here. And, you know, just enjoy this vacation. There's nothing else I could do at this point.

49:11

Really cool about it. I remember texting with you that day. The,

49:14

the framework you've talked about in the past that I love around this stuff is your, local verse tourist thing. I think that's so good of, like, you know, tourists,

49:23

like, freak out when the seasons change and just bounce. Yeah. And locals are aware that there are seasons and that, you know, they it comes in swings and they're aware of the environment so they can stick it out and be fine through it. I've always just thought there's a third one, which is the, like, stubborn local, like the dude that lives in the coastal village and is like, oh, global warming's not real. And then he's fucking underwater.

49:45

And, like, drowning. And he's, like, global warming's not real as he drowns. And so I'm always just, like, how do you make sure that you don't go from being the, like, the local and you're proud of being a local to stubborn local that just sits there until you die. Yeah. That's the hardest thing. And I remember with startups, this was always the question because you'll hear a story like, Pinterest had no traction for over a year and then finally started to work because he walked into an Apple store and, like, started putting Pinterest as a default homepage on these You know, he hustled. He was determined.

50:12

And it's like, oh, okay. Got it. So determination.

50:14

Just keep going even when all the data is telling you that this ain't working.

50:18

And then there's, like, the exact other advice, which is like, yo, you gotta be super data driven, feedback oriented. You gotta listen to the market. All that matters is are you making something people want. If you have no users, you gotta, like, you know, make adjustments, you gotta pivot.

50:30

And so the hardest question as a founder is to know,

50:33

am I being the right kind of stubborn Right? So am I being stubborn because

50:38

I'm right and I need to, you know, just tweak, just make small adjustments and just stay at it, be determined and be persistent?

50:46

Or am I banging my head against the wall? And I need to listen to the to the signals, and I need to be changing my mind. And nobody can give the generic advice about when to do what? It's super It's like super context dependent, super circumstance dependent. Same thing with investing. Right? Like, you know, am I, about should I should I

51:02

Should I still believe in something even, you know, do I believe in Facebook stock now that it's getting crushed?

51:06

Right? And for me, I went and bought more recently because I was like,

51:10

you know, what do I believe about this company and has that changed? So the tourist first local, right, is you gotta ask yourself, like, does the thing I believed about this has that changed? Do I have new information that makes me update my thinking here?

51:24

Do I am I, you know, am I holding on to this position just that I don't feel like I'm wrong. Right? Like, you know, am I am I willing to upset accept being wrong? You gotta ask yourself all these questions and be able to be honest with yourself. And Has that changed, with crypto? Has what? Sorry. Has your opinion of crypto changed and your conviction?

51:40

No. My opinions and my conviction has stayed the same, but that's about crypto as a whole, right, then on each specific, maybe project or coin, you might have, like, a slightly different opinion. You know, it would definitely Well, what's

51:51

one thing that you think is bullshit now that you didn't think was bullshit a year and a half ago. So I'll give you an example where that's not true, then I'll give you an example where that's true. So the not true one is like, let's take Luna, for example.

52:01

The the bet on Luna was always knowing that there's this. The way it was architect, it was this thing is gonna rock it up because the sort of the, what they call the ponsanomics

52:10

Right? Like, the game theory incentive.

52:13

Yeah, but people don't understand. Like, basically, it's just, like, an economic, a series of economic accent, incentives.

52:19

And so the incentives were were aligned such that this thing should go up during the during, you know, when

52:26

a certain participants behave a certain way. And from the beginning, there was always these blog posts out there about what does the death cycle look like? So what if this reversed course,

52:34

would this not because luna's the collateral? Would it cause it to, you know, collapse really fast. And the question was, like, will that happen? Will that happen? So even when you invest in at the beginning, we wrote our little investment memo to ourselves about, like, Here's our one pager. Why we think this is a good idea and why we think this could go horribly wrong. When it crashed, it wasn't like something we'd never had never thought of. It was Oh, yeah. That downside scenario we talked about, that's exactly what happened. Right? Like, basically, there was a giant, you know, cell pressure that crew that card caused that cascading down cycle. Yep. We always thought that could happen. We had hoped it wouldn't happen. We had thought that maybe there was a, you know, there would be a way to to put by pressure back against it. But nope. It wasn't gonna work. And so this is very fast example of basically

53:15

just because it turned out bad doesn't mean that the,

53:19

doesn't mean I changed my position because actually at the beginning, we said, well, here's why I'm not putting my entire net worth into this. Right? I put two hundred fifty k into it. That's not like a a massive

53:28

bet for me. It's a solid sized bet. Right? So it's like, you know, I put a appropriately sized bet because I thought I had upside and I thought there were some some key risks with it. The thing that I would say I've changed my opinion most on is I thought,

53:41

man, if people start to worry about inflation,

53:44

And they look at, man, you know, I have the same hundred k in my bank, but it just doesn't buy me the same amount it used to. Right? They'll realize, like, people will become more aware

53:53

that the money they have is diminishing the cash they have, the US dollars they have is diminishing in value. That they will probably look to go to a mar a monetary system that doesn't have that problem.

54:03

And so the idea that Bitcoin will do well

54:07

if people start to if if inflation becomes something that people are more and more worried about with the US dollar.

54:13

And that hasn't happened. Inflation got as bad as it's ever been, but people's response was more conservative than aggressive. People did not make a change to the Bitcoin monetary system, which would not have that problem.

54:26

They sort of, you know, sort of stuck with it. And, actually, the US dollars gained strength rip because other currencies got crushed even worse. And so the dollars gained strength. So that was one that I had thought that this was this is what would happen and it makes me reassess Was my logic incorrect

54:41

or,

54:42

or something else? You know, what what what did I get wrong about this idea that in a high inflation environment, bitcoin,

54:48

should be something that people start moving more into. I mean, the Bitcoin one is actually pretty interesting, Sean, because I I've thought about that a lot too of, is there is there something just like

54:58

in the segmentation

54:59

of how the price went up that is impacting that. Cause I still think bay

55:04

basically, my assumption of why that didn't happen. Like, why that, you know, scenario of high inflation and people flood into this is that most of the price increase was actually just driven by this, like, number go up, you know, crazy,

55:16

you know, loose monetary policy. People just pump into speculative, you know, high risk assets And then it wasn't really driven by, like, believers, like you, who underlying, were like, oh, there's really good fundamentals. The technology really makes sense driving it up. It was mostly just my random friends who were like, Bitcoin number go up. This is great. And then they freaked out when it went the other direction and and pulled out, you know, interest rates rise and you pull out I wonder whether, like, if you segmented it somehow of, like, the true underlying technology believers,

55:44

my guess would be that the picture would look different. Like, people that really are, like, thinking about the technology and thinking about the underlying,

55:51

you know, kind of like monetary policy that exists on the network, my guess would be those people think that this is a great time to be accumulating and buying. Yeah. I I think you're right. I think you're right. But basically, it's just in my mind, it was like a very simple picture. It was, like, you're playing one game and the rules of this game are that the bank gives you some money. It's a game of monopoly where the bank gives you some money, but every year, your money becomes worth a little bit less. By design. They're trying to make a two or three percent worse per year, but sometimes if it gets ten percent worse per year, right, or nine percent worse per year. Right? That's the the game is is set up that way. And, hey. Oh, yo, there's this other new addition of Monopoly that came out, or that doesn't happen to your money. My assumption was, like, Oh, people will just start to move to the new addition because they're not gonna like when their money becomes less valuable over time.

56:36

But I don't think that's the message that's got across. It was basically Bitcoin's how you get rich, Or bitcoin's how you lose your money, and that's the narrative that actually, like, played out. Because it was more it was more aggressive. But

56:47

Bitcoin will make you rich was an easier sell

56:50

to to people. Yeah. And it was also the reason why they'll start to sell their Bitcoin when they real when they feel like, oh, Bitcoin's crashing.

56:56

By the way, I've got one more non agency business idea for you guys. What is non services? But, yeah, maybe it's slightly serve. Not that much services. More product.

57:04

Mobile

57:05

podcast and video studio. Yeah, man. Dude. It's such a pain in the butt. Dude, huge pain in the ass, buy, like, a few vans,

57:14

kick them out with, like, a pretty fire setup. Just in the back of, like, a normal sized van, doesn't even have to be an RV for, like, two to three people could fit. Deck it out with, like, a few good DSLR cameras that can do the recording, like, dual camera setups so that you have, like, a few mics hanging off the sides, and basically go and post it up in a couple of major cities. One van in each major city. It has, like, dope backgrounds, cool lighting, like, you know, whatever, do the neon signs and shit in there and rent it out for, like, five hundred bucks for two hours to do podcast recordings

57:42

or, like, you know, a couple hundred bucks to do, like, people going in and filming Instagram shorts, TikToks, shit like that. Like, if you put one in LA and you put one in New York City, I bet you could kill it on a cash on cash return on one of those. I just joined this gym called the collective in Austin, and it's like this, like, fancy, whatever. Like, and everyone there looks like an Instagram model, and they have,

58:01

like co working there as well. But they also have three studios for podcasts, picture taking. Like, they just they just really don't know their audience. And I went there and everyone looks like their the type of person who is like, if you follow a shirtless rip guy on,

58:17

Instagram and they live in Austin, they're probably a member here. And I mean, if you catch them on bad lighting, they don't even look that good, but, like, somehow in that lighting, you'd look unreal.

58:27

I I I I think you're making fun of me. I don't know.

58:31

I think makes a huge difference with, with these, like, Instagram models. Right? You just get good lighting on one of those things. I bet you could kill it. I do think these, like, mobile studio though, you could crush it. Let me ask you. I'm looking at these, u hole box trucks. So how much do these cost to buy? So it looks like you could buy a used one of these

58:48

for, like, twenty five grand.

58:50

Right? So twenty five grand

58:52

And let's And you only have to put five down. Yeah. You put five down. You're probably gonna need to put another five into the kit, like, to make the the thing work.

59:01

And you probably need to do the operating the thing. But maybe maybe you could get rid of that, probably not. You probably have to have an operator on-site.

59:08

So I think that's the that's the tricky part where you gotta sell it as a as a membership, basically. It's gotta be a gym membership. So it's like you can use the studio. You can just book it when it's free.

59:18

You gotta be like a monthly member if you're, you know, if you're doing five hundred dollars a month or whatever, and you have a studio on demand. Well, that's a genius idea to do it as a member actually. Cause dude, the thing that made me think of this is, like, in New York now, there's these couple of studios where people are doing all, like, in person podcasts. Like, there's this, like, the fuck media is one of them. Yeah. And they go to stream. And they're like, they're solid. They're not great, but they're having to pay New York City rent. To, like, to do this. And so I can't imagine the economics are that great. And if you got a truck and you just bought it, you could go post this thing up in a parking lot and every two hours just move to a different parking lot. And, like, you never have to pay rent. You're paying the, you know, like, carrying cost of the of the truck and you're paying the whatever five to ten grand it takes you to actually get the truck out. We're gonna call it Moody.

59:59

The mobile studio, Moody, the Moody Boys. That's We might get a branding agency to work on the name, but yeah. Wait. Let me ask you a few things about branding. Definitely silence.

01:00:08

As feedback on your name.

01:00:13

But it's Tahill. Let me ask you a question.

01:00:15

01:00:16

Sean and I are trying to get popular on YouTube right now with this with this thing. And one thing that's kind of the elephant in the room when everyone talks to you. I mean, I know Sean talks about this constantly

01:00:27

is that you are just ridiculously

01:00:29

good looking.

01:00:31

Do do you think that this shtick of yours of having good hair and being good looking, is is that image working for you? And what aesthetic shtick should Sean and I have?

01:00:43

Alright. First off, calling in a shtick is pretty hilarious, do we? You know, this shick you have. It's like a whole lot shick. Yeah. Yeah. This will look like that. Whatever you got in between your ears, like, that stick. Like, let's talk about it. The the platforms that are visual, it obviously helps. To, like, when people are scrolling through things for, like, people to stop and say, oh, the person is, like, attractive. Right? Like, it just I mean, when you're scrolling to the ground, can you attractive girls. You're saying your hat helps.

01:01:11

Oh, no. So you agree.

01:01:13

Was that a mean girls reference, sir? Do you just drop a mean girls reference? Do you have a millennial through through.

01:01:19

The fact that I knew that it was a mean girls' reference is just as tell. You are a mean girl.

01:01:24

No, look. I I mean, for you guys, you're both good looking dudes. I'm not gonna sell you short. Sam, you got like a little look with the, like, fake glasses. I don't think those have a prescription on them. So it's like

01:01:36

they're definitely fake, dude. And then and then Sean.

01:01:39

Sean's got the, like, you know, my favorite line that Sean ever had is you know, if you're not gonna be good looking, be interesting looking, and I tell that to, like, everyone that I give advice to, like,

01:01:53

He's got the salt Dude, he's wearing a cookie. Like, he looks like literally every single person who shops at, like, a generic grocery store in the suburbs.

01:02:01

What's wrong with talking about? That's a that's a vibe a little bit. Like, in the tech world, that's a little bit of a vibe. But that's not interesting. I don't know, man. I mean, I think you guys can play up the whole, like, your shtick of these two guys that look completely different that are, like, somehow friends. Like, you guys are, like, cat dog, man. You remember show back in the day. You know, what we're going for, we're going for, like,

01:02:21

why are these guys famous?

01:02:23

That's what we need to do. If we just get over the hump, so accessible. People like this.

01:02:28

These guys that there's nothing special about them. But that's our thing, though, that there's nothing I don't think you have to be that good looking on YouTube, by the way. Like, you guys don't need to be, like,

01:02:39

models

01:02:39

on YouTube.

01:02:41

If you, like, look at the people that have crushed on YouTube, it's not, like, hot dudes and hot chicks on YouTube necessarily.

01:02:47

Not that you guys aren't hot. I don't want you to come away. I don't want Sam to text me later being like, Hey, man. What you said?

01:02:54

Because I know I'm gonna get that text later tonight from Sam. But but you're wrong. I don't Hot dudes do better on YouTube.

01:03:01

I don't think they do better. I don't think that's I mean, I'm not on YouTube yet. I'm gonna get on YouTube here soon, and I'll let you know whether we think that's true.

01:03:08

So you're saying you think you're hot.

01:03:10

You're you got this real burden you're carrying, my friend.

01:03:17

Well, like Alex from Mostly, he's got where he wears, like, those stupid cut off jeans now and and he's just, like, yoked. That nose, nose strip and, like, the nose, nose strip is a choice. Level of,

01:03:27

being being muscular.

01:03:28

That's perfect example of. You don't have to be great looking. You gotta be interesting looking. Yeah, dude. He's pea peacock and hardcore, and it and it's it's kinda just a look. It's a look, man. And, like, each of you guys has a look, and if you can just stick to a consistent, like, it's like Chrisaka with his cowboy shirts. Like, you need your thing. Yeah. I I've been actually been thinking about this for a long time. I've been needing a uniform. I tweeted this out ago. I'm looking for a uniform.

01:03:50

I wanna look the same every time I'm on this podcast. So I need something from here up. Like a robe. Is is gotta be, yeah, maybe a robe. It's gotta be signature.

01:04:00

And,

01:04:01

I'm in the market. So I'm taking suggestions. I'm gonna put a bounty on this, actually. I'm gonna give a thousand dollar bounty to anybody who can help me develop my

01:04:08

The the chest up look.

01:04:11

That's what I'm looking for.

01:04:13

I kinda wanna see you do, like, a traditional Indian tire for it. Like, it could be kind of fire if you were wearing like a dope like Corta or like, you know, some sort of like Indian, you know, up top. I think that'd be kind of fire. Sean Puri. It could be part of your whole, like, angle with the name and stuff. That's true. It did. Okay.

01:04:30

You're you're eligible for the bounty. Is that now.

01:04:33

I might I might throw into it. I also might match it just because I think it's gonna be funny to see whatever you're You heard it here first.

01:04:40

I'll throw in a thousand. I'll throw in thousand on top of it. Sam's fucking having issues before he's on the hook for a thousand. Yeah. No. I'm not. I don't I don't give it up here for sure. Just your you're breaking out. I'll give you the peer pressure. What did you guys say? This is the stupidest thing ever. I'm not gonna give someone a thousand dollars. So they can tell tell Sean what t shirt to wear.

01:04:57

Well, you have a signature look already. So it's easier for you to say. Yeah. One of my muscles, I mean. Kinda like, no. You've got, like, a little, like, a pretty boy thing going with the, like, non prescription glasses who's, like, not a grandfather type of thing. Yeah. It's good. Yeah.

01:05:11

You are gonna be, like, you're gonna be a quintessential father. You're gonna have a lot of stern talks with your child there. Do you know what's coming?

01:05:17

I don't know what to say to this. Salhel. Thank you.

01:05:20

Yeah. Yeah. Wait. I wanna hear this before you go.

01:05:23

What is the grand plan? What is the grand vision for yourself? So you went from no name PE guy

01:05:28

as we established

01:05:30

to to to legendary thread boy,

01:05:33

to, now

01:05:34

CNBC contributor

01:05:36

book deal guy author, I think you're gonna be president is that I I joke about that a lot, but I I genuinely believe you could become the president someday if you wanted to. Do you have a grand plan for yourself? What's the vision? I could see that being in the cards long term running for public office. I don't know if president is a role that you necessarily want. I think it's, like, probably one of the hardest and worst jobs in the world. Don't go in. Like,

01:06:00

Obama went in looking young and then he lee, you know, leaves all gray. Like, looking, you know, looking rough. It's like the highest stress job in the world. Running for governor would be I don't know. That could be pretty fun. Due to be a governor of of a state. Do you know anything about politics? I've never known you to be I studied public policy. I did, I did my masters in public policy, dude. Oh, yeah. So That was always like what I wanted to do. I mean, I took a class on Bass leaving. Like, that doesn't, like, what it, like, you know what I mean? Do you think the people that are serving in public office today know a lot about politics? It's, like, what is it's sort of like the Naval thing of, like, you don't read a business book to know business. Like, there's no such thing as politics. It's like, you know, are you a reasonable thinker? Do you have the ability to change your mind, which right now, politicians do not And can you inspire people? Do you would you get people to move on things? Which party would you be? I don't even know. I'm an independent man. So, I mean, I've I've voted Democrat voted Republican in prior election. So I actually I actually don't know what party I've got problem. I'm hoping that a third party rises over the next twenty years before I actually go do this because I hate the direction that, you know, like, polar politics has gone.

01:07:01

You know, it's just like the loudest minority on each side. I could see you being a good because you pretty much never take a stand on anything kind of like what you just did. You're like, I I always call you. I'm like, you're PC like the rock, man. You never say anything inappropriate. Like, you you you you are like like the rock?

01:07:17

Well, yes. But it's a hell he never takes a stand on anything. He's always he hedges everything. He says, you you could be beautiful for a politician. Alright. Well, I'm counting on your fundraising for support, Tim.

01:07:29

I'll even introduce you as my hot friend, Sam, when you come to give a speech in my in my future. Look, you know, about that. You already do it for me then? You're already lying. You're already lying. We could get politicians.

01:07:40

Well, thanks for coming on. Where what do you wanna do you wanna promote something? Is that a thing? Do you have something to promote? I don't know, man. People kinda know where to find me. I'm at. Sahil Bloom on every everything, and my newsletter is at my website. Saahil bloom dot com. Well, I'm happy we finally got you on.

01:07:55

Have to do it again. We're gonna get another guy. I'm gonna ask Austin Reef to come on. That'll be another group chat guy. We've asked Nikita to come on a few times, but he's, you know, weird. Nikita's he's busy right now. Yeah. Nikita's busy, like, basking in the glory of his gas app fame. No. He's just it thinks it's cool to tell me no, I think.

01:08:13

I mean Nikita

01:08:14

Nikita right now, like Nikita's been that guy that's like, oh my god, guys. I hate running this app. This is so tough. And then, like, you'll see, like, on his Instagram him, like, having a photoshoot is his house, like, posing out, like, looking like this. It is girlfriend the behind the seat says, oh my god. This looks like an album you cover.

01:08:32

Nikita's living his best life, man. More props to him because that dude had called shot and has actually gotten and done it. So we'll get we'll get Austin on. We gotta give you a few more. We've had Huber on, but, dude, thanks for coming and doing this. We appreciate it. Thank you, man.

00:00 01:09:00