Andrew Wilkinson On The Secretive Billionaire Who Acquired Burger King | My First Million #185

And you said you'd want to invest your own money in this. That's what you said here.

Yeah, I would love— if anyone wants to do this, I will 100% invest. So please email me. Um, but this is one of those things where like, I feel like I could rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let's travel, never looking back. All right, everyone, we have a special episode with Andrew Wilkinson. Andrew Wilkinson started this company called Meta Lab, which grew to make tens of millions of dollars and using the profits from his agency, uh, MetaLab, he eventually bought dozens of more companies. So he's collectively, his companies do hundreds of millions of dollars a year in sales and have created over a billion dollars worth of value. So he's, uh, seen a lot of interesting stuff. And in today's episode, we talk about 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 Uh, he has for starting and growing companies. He currently launched a local news business. So it's kind of 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 then he started a few more things and, or wants to start more stuff. And he's even said that if you are starting some of these companies to holler at him, cause he wants to invest. So give it a listen. And by the way, if you're in Miami, Sean and I on June 4th are going to be in Miami. We're doing Austin on June 3rd, but that's already sold out, but June June 4th. We have room for up to 400 people. I think already 200 people have RSVP'd. It's free. Go to my Twitter handle, @TheSamParr, and scroll down. You'll see the Eventbrite link. It's totally free. June 4th. It's a Friday. Come. And by the way, we've been working our ass off to make content for you, just for you. Can you do me a favor and click subscribe in iTunes and 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 this. So please, I work my butt off for you. Just click subscribe 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? I got a really bad, uh, really bad cold. I spent all day yesterday with Kleenex up my nose, so, uh, if my voice sounds a little froggy, that's why.

It only sounds froggy because you said it sounded froggy. I think you're okay. Um, so Andrew Wilkinson, good friend of mine, good friend of the pod. Is this description that I used 3 or 4 weeks ago the same description? Is that, is that the same thing? Are you wearing that same personality? Is that life or have you done something new and amazing? Because you're always pulling something out of your sleeve.

Yeah, I've got— I think since then I've launched a couple of businesses actually, but no, the description is still accurate.

And so we're going to talk about a couple of things. The first thing we're going to talk about is, well, you got a bunch of ideas here. I'm excited for the ideas, but I want to talk about Billy of the Week because we talked about two people last time you were here and that was It's right next to the biology episode. It's the most listened episode ever.

Really? No way. Which episode was that? The one where we did the two Billys of the week?

Yeah. Something like, I think almost 50,000 people listened to it, which is like, it's an hour-long thing. It's a lot of time.

Crazy.

Um, and then the third most listened thing was the one we did after that. So, you know, it could just be it.

Okay. Yeah. So move aside, uh, move aside, Sean.

Yes. So it's like biology is like whatever it is, you're like within hundreds or like 1,000 of it and then you're the next two. And so that's why I figured we'll start off with that one. But you sent me— yesterday I asked you to tell me an interesting person and I'm going to go do a ton of research on them. And I did. And I have a feeling you already know a lot about this person. But what's this? What's this person's name?

So his name is— I don't know how to say it. I think it's Jorge Paulo. It's a Brazilian name. Oh, there you go. Okay. Can you say his name please? And every time we need to say his name, we'll just say Abreu. 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 Jorge Paulo.

And then Paulo is considered his first name as well, because in a lot of the articles I read about him, they call him Jorge— sorry, Jorge Paulo.

It might be his middle— Paulo might be his middle name, or it might be like a double first name. I'm not sure, but Jorge Paulo Lehmann. Yeah, but anyway, this guy's totally mysterious. He doesn't like to talk about what he does. Uh, there's only a few interviews with him online. Um, but he basically, I mean, if you think about the businesses that he owns, uh, you would know them. So Burger King, uh, Budweiser, Tim Hortons, Kraft Foods, Popeyes, Heinz Ketchup, right? So he basically goes out He finds these amazing, you know, multi-generational businesses that have been around for 50+ years that do something very, very simple. It's just going to grow over time. He 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, 40 years or something like that, starting in Brazil.

Let's give a little bit of background of him. So how old is he? He's about 75 years old, right? And he's based out of Brazil. He's 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 Brazil to become one of these private equity or Warren Buffett-like people out of Brazil. And like you said, very little is known about him and he doesn't give interviews. And in a lot of the interviews that I read about him, they said we actually tried 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 is in 1931, at the age of 32. He had some jobs beforehand where he was a banker, but he started this one bank. Abreu, you want to help me out here? Here's what it's pronounced. Here's how you pronounce it. You see that right there? It's called Garantia.

I don't see it. You put it in the chat. It's highlighted.

It's highlighted in the doc.

I think it's Garantia or something like that. Garantia.

And it was described as like the Goldman of Brazil. I don't know if it was described at the time like that, but he was 32 when he launched it. It was 1971. And what made it kind of famous was he had a very— 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, was people who had PSD. And he would hire these folks, and it— in previously at different companies, you would automatically get a bonus if you were one of the partners, but they created some type of system that was, uh, they tried to make it as based off of merits as much as possible. So a lot of different people could 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 kind of created this iconic culture that, that seems what they're, uh, they're famous for. And it grew to be quite huge. It was something like $1 billion 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 $650 million, which is a still a ton of money, but I think it was minuscule compared to how big it got. So I have a question for you, Andrew, and then we're going to get into this 3G thing. So then after he sold it for $650, he started buying Gillette stock, and with his other older founders of the old company, he started 3G, which was a play on their name, and there was 3 partners, and they ended up buying Burger King, Tim Hortons, all the companies that you said. And at this point, he's worth something like $25 billion and one of the, one of the richest people in the world. Um, but I had a ton of questions, uh, 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, what's that process like? That sounds so ambiguous and so hard to understand.

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 banker means so many different things. It could be somebody who works at a bank and lends out money or whatever. But a banker is really like a real estate agent for businesses, 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. So let's say you, Sam, go, I need to raise $100 million 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 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 middleman on these huge transactions, multi-billion dollar transactions, and you're taking a 2.5% to 5% fee on everything you do. So with like 50 to 100 people, you can do crazy amounts of money.

What skillset? So when this guy started at 31, uh, 32, what skillset would he have needed in order to make this happen?

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 junkie 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.

Do you consider yourself a banker?

No, I actually generally really hate dealing with bankers. And I think it's kind of like real estate agents, right? Like, I'm very skeptical of real estate agents. I think in the next 50 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 it up. There's one, there's one in 100 that's amazing and will 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 want to raise money, 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 dApps and then breathe on the phone while you talk to other people and then take a huge fee.

How much money have you raised?

Uh, we've raised maybe, uh, well, it depends on, it depends on how you think about it. So, um, I would say in the neighborhood of about $200, $250 million or something like that, if you include our IPO or our reverse takeover we just did.

Not including that, what's it, $100?

200, maybe.

Oh, so the, the SPAC that you did wasn't a significant—

including— it was $60 million. That was, that was how much we raised when we took that business public.

Wow. So then your funds have well over $100 million.

Yeah.

And you didn't use a banker for any of that?

No, we just called people we knew. I mean, we had— we bumbled into this world. Like, I had no idea 5 years ago, 6 years ago even, I didn't know what the difference between a banker and a bank teller was. I had no idea. Um, and because of that, we just kind of kept meeting interesting business people. And as we met interesting business people, they'd keep saying, hey, are you guys raising money? Because 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, uh, like when you're starting something like this, and this is, I, you like this guy because I imagine like you, you, you kind of want to, you want to steal some of his life, right? I mean, you want to, you want, you, you, you want to 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 2 years later it doesn't exist, right? I like the longevity and 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 what he does is, um, generally they have one key insight, right? So it'll be something as simple as, well, When they bought Budweiser, it was on the third generation. They'd 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. And so it's this crazy coup for these guys from Brazil who, you know, they came from basically, uh, you know, started at zero, although I think they were, you know, upper middle class in Brazil, but starting there to owning Budweiser is crazy.

And I want to ask you about how to get into those deals. And when I read about him, it sounded like he was the young guy of a 3-person partnership. Um, which definitely—

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, I believe, went in and runs, um, runs, uh, 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 made him like $650, or they sold for $650. And from what it sounded like, it was like a, a little bit of an older guy who had 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.

Right. And, um, and so I have, uh, I had a few questions about this, but I wanted to, so let's just talk about this guy's strategy at 3G and his whole life. It seems he's done the same thing, which is he's a cheapskate. He's frugal. He's incredibly frugal. Um, so he's done a couple of things. 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. And he would do famous things like when they bought Burger King, they banned color copies, meaning when you're using the photocopy machine, he was like, just black and white only. You also— what was this thing you said about private jets?

They, they also forced people to print on both sides. They'd say, you not only can you not print color, but you have to print double-sided. So the first thing they would always do whenever they buy a business is they sell all the private jets immediately. Right. And let's be real, most Fortune 500 companies have like between 1 and 10 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. And they all—

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 hundreds of millions of dollars, and he's staying at like a Quality Inn. But I think there's something to demonstrating that at the top if you want your lower, lower-level employees to care too.

I actually think that that's a stupid thing. So I get staying at cheap hotels because staying at, staying at like a Marriott Courtyard, which is like an $89 a thing, I'm on board with that. It's probably even cheaper. Some of it's $50. 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 place late, you want that. But whenever these people say they fly economy, I'm like, that's kind of stupid. If I'm flying 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 athlete to like work off 2 hours sleep. Um, do you actually believe that people do that?

I think they do. I mean, maybe it's just lore. Uh, maybe these guys are super rich and they pay for it personally or something like that. But, um, I, I don't know. I mean, I think if you're— I know like Walmart has a big corporate jet, um, fleet and they actually have a really good argument for it, which is they're 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 they were to fly commercial, it would take 10 days to do 2 days of work. So I think there's a good argument for it there, but I can't imagine the CEO of AB 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. I just think it's kind of a— 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 going to get the worst 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 35-year-old as a CFO, right? Or maybe even a 30-year-old CEO.

Yeah. Yeah. I wrote about it. They hired a 32-year-old who was part of their management company. And he took it over and he kicked ass. A few things that he did was at the time Burger King was, was trying to advertise predominantly towards young men and he goes, no, we're going to be for everyone, so we're going to advertise for everyone. Another thing that he did was, do you remember the King Burger King? Like the King? Yeah, he was like, that's kind of creepy. Get rid of that. And then the third thing that he did was at the time Burger King employed something like 28,000 people. So they owned most of their restaurants and they would hire the people. He goes, now we're going to switch to a franchise and we're going to help all these franchise owners line up loans. You guys can make your own places really nice and we're going to help you make it nice. And that was the big switch that he did. Now Burger King, I believe, crushes 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 5%, they should be 15%. And we can do that via very simple improvements 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 going to spin out all of our corporately owned locations and franchise them. And by doing that, we're going to 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. Um, and did insanely well on it.

Oh, that's interesting. And when they did it, there was a funny story about the guy who we're talking about. I'm going to try and say his name one more time. What is it?

Jorge Paulo.

I want to— when I see it, I want to say Jorge. But anyway, he— so there's a funny story about him that he had never had Burger King until 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, uh, this is too big. And he's known for like really only drinking water and eating really healthy, but he owns, you know, non-healthy stuff. What's your take on that? Do you think that it— 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 want to give out, or I wouldn't want it out in public or whatever. I think it sounds kind of lame.

So this type of business, um, that you like, and I, I enjoy too, but, um, would— when I was reading all about them, would you say this— to me it boils down to you have to be good at fundraising money, so you have to be good at getting— convincing 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 other places, typically people who could start their own thing, 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 inspiring and leading them. So you have to be a leader of leaders. Is that like the three, three pillars to this? Am I missing—

Zach, you nailed it. It's really— and it's really, really hard. The hardest part is recruiting 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? And then how can we validate that they're going to be able to do what we need from them? And, you know, you think about like that 32-year-old, he was probably working in head office for 10 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. But 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 going to get mobbed. And it was really weird. We actually— it was like, like we thought we were going to have this. No, no. We thought we were going to have like overwhelming amounts of deals to do. And we thought it would be a great time to have excess capital. And, uh, that didn't happen, right? Everyone was actually weirdly optimistic and the government wrote the check and all that stuff. But, um, but doing, doing the money raising wasn't actually that hard, like running an agency for, or owning an agency for 15 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 your track record. That, that was totally fine. The hard part is really the execution of the actual. Deals and hiring the right people.

And I would argue, I mean, I don't know really what I'm talking about entirely. This is strictly from reading. It seems like executing the deals is hard, but it's not that hard. The hard part is really the people part.

Is that— we, we, I would, we've done deals. We just did our biggest deal ever. Um, and it was over $100 million and it was no more work or complexity than doing a $1 million deal. In fact, it was simpler than a $1 million deal because it's just a better business with a better team in place and more momentum. What is always complicated people? Uh, well, in our, in our public company, we bought a company called Stamped, which is one of the top ratings and reviews apps on Shopify. Um, we just closed that deal. There's a $110, I believe, total. Uh, it gets paid out. It's a structure. You'd have to look at the press release for the exact structure, but Wow. That's in and around there.

And when I was reading this, so I'm in the middle of reading, um, Human Nature by Robert Greene. 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 great.

And the reason— 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 was— like I'm taking a semester of Robert Greene. And the reason why I am reading it is because 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, like I guess selling stuff, making the product really good. In my business, it was like, I'm just going to 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 effective day-to-day interactions with people. And in order to do that, you have to have a little bit of a— I'll call it like a Machiavellian 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 mysterious. Like, you have to attract these people, and they have to both want to 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 going to crush Or live up to your expectations. What do you mean?

Well, like basically, how do you— one of the things, like some of the, some people I've worked with have this thing where you just want, you always want to raise the bar and you always want to 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 want to live up to the expectations. And I've always struggled with that. Uh, well, just different, different partner, business partners and stuff I've dealt with over the last couple of years. Um, but, but, uh, like with employees and stuff, I've always had this habit of wanting to be liked and I still want to be liked, but I want to be firm and I want to have boundaries because in the past what I've done is in wanting to be liked, I've excused like somebody failing and said 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 fucked 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 need from you and whatever it is. And I've always been terrible at that.

It's crazy. I mean, Elon Musk has it, Bill Ackman, who you know, has it, this guy who we're talking about, he definitely had it when I looked at him and I like, would see how he would dress and how he held himself. Uh, you know, Travis Kalanick kind of 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, um, they, they can crush it. Like whatever they, whatever they set their mind to, they're going to get done. And that's regardless if you agree with their ethics or not. But you definitely could agree that like these guys are going to, they're going places.

There's a great story about, uh, Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook. I forget who told this story, but she goes, I was in a meeting with Cheryl and I, you know, I gave this presentation and then she walked to me outside and she said, during your presentation, it was great. But you kept saying, like, 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 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 want to 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.

That story's from, um, Radical Candor or whatever. Yeah, Radical Candor. It's a good one. But, um, as I was reading this guy, I'm like, man, in order to get into some of these deals like Heinz, um, whatever, in order to attract these, I mean, basically like 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 and you have to lead the killers. So like you've gotta be the killer amongst killers. And that is kind of like a fascinating thing to think about because 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. And 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 celebrities, like Marilyn Monroe. It's like, it's basically kind of seduction a little bit. Um, and how do you just like get people under your spell and hopefully your spell is positive, but I don't know.

Yeah. I think like there's a, I think it sounds stressful though. Like the idea of like, I'm going to be a killer and I'm going to, 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 to not work as hard as you or not care as much as you, they won't. 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 it. 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. So I think a lot of the time this stuff is just an incentives problem and that that's pervasive through everything. Going back to realtors, they have an incentive to just sell your house for the lowest price to get it done, 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 in that you don't care about this because you do. Your, your, your public image is, and I don't know if you mean to do this or not, but I'll tell you what your image is, is like, you're like a cool guy. Like you dress nice. You've got slicked back hair. You're good looking. You have these cool glasses. You're a designer. I mean, brother, look at like the website. What's the URL of Tiny?

Tiny Capital.

Tiny Capital. You use the same wonderful imagery. You use like, you have a brand and a brand is exactly this Machiavellian thing that I'm describing of how to manipulate the feelings and emotion.

I don't know. I don't know.

I think you said the word Machiavellian, but you are manipulating people to feel a certain way and you are 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. Or the other is no, you're trying to communicate and you're an effective communicator. Right. And don't get me wrong. We definitely do like yuck up the kind of, um, 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, there's definitely a lot of public, public image stuff that we think about.

So we'll wrap up with this Billy of the Week, uh, segment, but what's your main takeaways from this guy? And, um, there's a book about him. It's called like. Greatness, I think. I couldn't find— I only saw it in Portuguese. I don't know if there's an English version.

Yeah, it's called, uh, what is it? Dream Big.

Dream Big.

It's on Amazon. Yeah, it's quite good. I read it maybe 4 or 5 years ago.

What's your main takeaways from this guy? Why? I mean, the biggest— what can I learn from him and what should I avoid?

I 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 was important, which is different than how I perceived you as doing, which was, um, you need to be 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. And that gives them the ability to just like overrule and take over. Um, and you got to raise a lot of money. I mean, if you're going to go buy Heinz ketchup, like that's not the kind of deal you can get like a crazy deal on. You're going to have to pay the highest market price for, and in order to do that, you've got to 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.

Oh, and I want to 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're, you're a fair bit ahead of me in terms of like, you know, we're both going down the same path. Um, and then one path in front of that, you're friends with guys like Bill Ackman, these folks that are worth, you know, billions of dollars and, and yada, like they're just doing shit. So like along this path, let's say, of the spectrum of people doing stuff, it starts with like a scrappy internet nerd in their bedroom like you and I were, and then it comes to like, all right, you get a little bit of success like I have, and then it comes to like, all right, you're starting to like move things a little bit, But even you said you're still a pipsqueak compared to like, you know, an Ackman or whatever. How does this transition from going from like someone who's kind of interesting to like a mover and shaker at a global scale? How do you— does that kind of seem like a crazy transition to you? Because it's kind of like you're not far from that, it seems. But like these guys like Bill Ackman, when they say something, they're in the news. When they say, um, when they like make a trade every once in a while, it can like impact millions of people.

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 $1 million 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 $30 million or $100 million or $1 billion 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 Ackman. I mean, Ackman, I don't know what he's worth, probably like $4, $5, $6 billion, but this George A. Paulo guy, he's worth $25 billion. Right. And so everyone's looking up at some, some person that they want to be and someone doing bigger stuff. I think, um, 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. Um, but I don't necessarily think it buys you any happiness or a better life necessarily. And I think there's a really interesting decision of, well, do you want to be a mover and shaker? Is it worth all the downsides? I think there are quite a few.

No shit. I agree. Um, all right. Let's talk about some ideas. Um, what we're going to talk about is not necessarily an idea, but something that you're working on right now. I want to talk about Capital Daily because I've seen you, I've seen this from the beginning and I'm getting updates and this latest update sounds pretty amazing.

Yeah. So, I mean, the last 2 years, I'll actually, let me just zoom out and I'll say, talk about what happened. So basically, uh, I read the newspaper every day. Uh, I would read the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and read all this incredible investigative reporting. And then I would pick up my local paper, which is called the Times Colonist here in Victoria, Canada. And it was just, there's nothing. It was like, they didn't have any journalists. They laid everyone off and it was all just like AP wire service. So it was 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 was 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. And I looked at buying the local paper actually, but they wanted like a crazy amount of money. They had like printing presses, like, you know, unionized employees. It's like a cruise ship, not a speedboat. It would be a pain in the ass to buy it. And so I went to a friend who is a stay-at-home mom who had some experience doing a bunch of writing. And I said, hey, why don't we just start a MailChimp account and we'll come up with a brand. We called it Capital Daily. And we'll send out a daily newsletter and we'll just summarize like, hey, here's like 3 or 4 stories of things that are happening in town. So we start doing this and, uh, 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. Uh, so you're saying you, you had a friend that would buy advertising to get new users and you said, hey, could you see if you could run some ads to get email subscribers to Capital 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, how 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 going to spend like $200 grand on ads. And so we spent I don't know, $100,000, $200,000. And very quickly we got to like 25,000 subscribers. 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. 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 I was having a lot of fun with it. Uh, we started hiring a whole bunch of people and, uh, 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 a little over 6 months, a year ago, I partnered with this guy Farhan, and he had scaled the biggest local news site in Vancouver. And he took over as CEO, and now he's monetized it. And I think we're going to break even very soon on the local stuff in Victoria. We've started selling out ads. And I think like on a unit economic basis where we look at Victoria, it's now profitable. Uh, and it can be very profitable if our membership model works and we've started expanding. So we've now got, uh, 6 or 7 different newsletters in different areas, mostly here in Canada. Um, and we're scaling and I'm super excited about it.

So is that Overstory Media Group?

Yeah.

So go ahead.

I, it's funny. We like. We chose the name. I liked the name Overstory, but we got cute and we were like, oh, Overstory Media Group is OMG. And that looks cool as a logo. And so we chose Overstory Media Group, but then now everyone calls it that. And I hate that name, but I really like Overstory.

Okay. Overstory. So Overstory is the parent company that owns Capital Daily.

Yeah, dude.

It looks like you have like 50 people working there.

Yeah. We've, we've scaled a lot over the last little bit.

Are these all full-time?

It's like a big bet. Yeah, these are all pretty much all full-time people.

How much did you invest to start this business?

I think at this point I've probably spent just over $2 million, but you have to remember that probably the first $700K was just me, me not monetizing it soon enough and just focusing on building the audience first. So I think we probably spent $200, $250K in ads. And then we probably burned an unnecessary $500K, like hiring the wrong people and kind of like experimenting. So really, like, at this point, we have the biggest news business in my city for probably $750K to $1 million. Um, and I think that business can probably at scale probably do $500K to $1 million in profit once we're actually like going. So I feel pretty good about it, but now we're taking this bigger bet that, you know, we can basically roll out local news across Canada.

And Farhan is your co— is he's like the, the co-founder?

Yeah.

And so you attracted him because you go, I'll put up the money if you run it.

Exactly. Like I said, look, I've already kind of got this thing, I've proven the model out. And, uh, 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 want to do business with this person. And they just have the right background. Like he'd done— he'd spent like 5, 10 years doing the exact everything that I needed. Um, so it was a total no-brainer.

Dude, I feel like this is a much bigger deal than you're making it seem.

Yeah, it's pretty crazy what it's become. And it's, you know, it goes back to, I have in total, uh, 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 morning and I give them feedback. Uh, and I think I annoy Farhan with like daily texts about it. But, um, I've only really spent a few, probably less than a week of time on this. And the key leverage point has just been, uh, bringing Farhan on board. Because when Farhan joined, it was just a single newsletter with like 3 employees. Um, 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 going to work and it can be profitable. Let's go do the exact same thing in Canada.

And so you're going to hope— well, how's the story going to end, do you think?

I don't know. I mean, I think that if it's true in Victoria, it's probably true in a lot of other places. Um, the interesting thing is trying to figure out like, you know, what topics people really want to hear and are they really variable city by city, right? So for example, like we expanded into Langford, which is a suburb here. And it's more working class. And so it's figuring out, okay, you know, what do those people want to hear, uh, versus somebody who lives, you know, in, in Victoria or in Vancouver? Do they want different topics? Like, you know, just that kind of stuff I think is going to be really interesting to figure out.

And what's your membership, your subscription going to be?

Uh, we haven't announced it yet, but we're kind of thinking about like somewhere between $100 and $200 a year. Uh, getting local discounts, access to events, maybe like a member-only newsletter, uh, and extra content and stuff. One of the things I really want to 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, uh, 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. Um, like 300 people signed up. Crazy. So yeah. Wow, this is amazing. I can't believe you didn't ask me to be part of this, dude.

So frustrated. Maybe I will.

I'm—

I think I have— it's all just my own money at this point. So if I decide I got to go big, I'll definitely hit you up.

I'm very interested. You got to make me an advisor. I think this is going to be sick. All right. You want to talk about another idea? So you— we'll talk about the Patreon thing in a second. What's this? Which one do you want to move to?

Let's do the pregnancy stuff.

Okay. I think that's cool.

You want to do this?

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. Uh, I think it's a really good idea. So, um, 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 Mozart, you know, different, uh, health things people do for their kids, but nobody really thinks about health during pregnancy. And I think this is something that's really important. That's totally overlooked. Um, my son was born early. He was born like 3 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 knows it's absolutely terrifying. 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, uh, a really healthy pregnancy, but then also to, um, 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, Dr. Rhonda Patrick. 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, make sure they're not anemic and stuff. It minimizes any risk of pregnancy and it also maximizes IQ, um, and general flourishing, ADHD, all this other stuff. So there's this huge— in marketing, 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 want to 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 want to do this, here's all the potential bad things you can avoid, and hey, you can make your kids smarter and better in the process. There's a huge opportunity to basically do like Roman or Hims 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.

And you said you'd want to invest your own money in this. That's what you said here.

Yeah, I would love— if anyone wants to do this, I will 100% invest, so please email me. Um, but this is one of those things where like every 3 months I'm like, why the hell hasn't anyone done this yet?

Well, there is a— but there's a reason why you shouldn't invest in this, which 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 launchpad business. It's something that can make like you could be big, but there's no competitive barrier, right? So you're going to go out, you're going to do this, then a bunch of people are going to 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. Um, but I think there's something here.

Have you heard of the, um, there's this guy named, um, I forget his name, uh, Joel, maybe Joel on Writing is his blog, and he says there's Ben Jerry businesses and then there's Ben Jerry's versus Amazon is what he says. He goes, but Ben Jerry's, it's like a unique, interesting brand and a person can go to ice cream 5 days a week and try all types of different stuff and everyone can survive. And the only thing that separates Ben Jerry's 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 100 years and it could probably last for 100 years and probably won't go away. Very easily. But then there's like an Amazon, which is you can really only— you really are only going to subscribe to one Amazon Prime. And once you give your credit card to Amazon and save it, you're probably just going to continue to use that. And so with the Ben Jerry's 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. So long as you're willing to do it for 20, 30 years, it can get big. You got to get huge really fast because everyone can copy you. It's kind of like Rome's and Hymns. There's a reason why like there was like 5 right away because someone saw it and they go, oh, hurry up, copy it. You could spit this shit up up in 3 weeks, but Hims, the only moat here is size.

It's literally a form. If you 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 onto 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 happened to subscribe with them. And so other people would just go out and you end up basically competing into whatever the cost of the ads is. If it costs $2 to convert someone, then you can make 5 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.

When 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 have to go at the 10 minutes past, right?

Yeah, something around about, about $115,000.

So you have this thing called What Is Enough Money? I 100% want to talk about that. So let's talk about one more, one more idea and then we can come back. Andrew has a huge list of ideas. We'll save these and do it for the next one. But what, which other idea do you want to go to?

Yeah, this one's really, this is a really weird story, but so my whole life I could never burp. So my brother would like burp in my face and I'd be like, what the hell? How do I do that? I just 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, uh, and then when I was about 23 or 24, I started getting this weird acid reflux and I just get this shitty feeling of pressure and then acid reflux. And it started happening day after day after day. And it started driving me absolutely crazy. And so about 7 or 8 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 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. I did acupuncture, like everything, and nothing worked. And finally, after 7 years of researching this, Um, I was on Google and I, I thought about this burping thing and I was like, oh, I wonder if it's that. And I found this Reddit community called NoBurp.

Oh my God.

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 and he injects Botox into the cricopharyngeal 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 to Chicago about 6 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 25% 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 colorblind people put these glasses on and they could see colors or when babies get—

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.

But there's a video of me burping.

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 4 years. Like, I'm just like, I'm very emotional, but, uh, it sounds fucked up. Now I can burp like a normal person.

Do you have 35 years of gas built up?

Dude, literally, like, I didn't know, I didn't know what it was like to just feel like release. Right. I just always had pressure. 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, you know, they are, or, um, uh, primary physicians, they can help you, but they're not going to 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, 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 going to go to every doctor's appointment. They're going to get you into the best specialist. They're going to push the doctors to do testing. They're going to look at all the outcomes, all the data, read all the papers. Um, 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 it 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?

Yes.

So I have that, uh, basically I pay, and I have it because someone like got it for me when I was like really ill. Um, this billionaire lady, it was a crazy story that I'll tell another time. But basically I, um, have this doctor named Dr. Horowitz and I just text him, I go, hey Dr. Horowitz, um, 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 they, you know, and I pay an annual fee for it, $25,000. And would that not be this?

Well, 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 him, you say you want an MRI, but if you say, hey, my back is hurting, the question is, is he going to be able to have time to spend 4 hours a day researching your back specifically and figure that out for you? Is he going to have time to go to all the doctor's appointments and interact with all the specialists 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 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, et cetera.

Kind of like, um, a health, a health manager.

Totally. And it's specifically around an issue, or like you could do it around specific issues, but I think it's, I think it's kind of like a weird niche. I recently heard about a business where all they did was negotiate, uh, bills for hospitals. And it was like a very small number of people and this business made an absolute killing. And that kind of turned me on to these niche medical areas.

Did you, um, look into the— there's this thing called, uh, a Mayo Clinic, um, executive— what's it called— a Mayo Clinic executive— I forget exactly what it's called, but have you seen this where you pay, uh, executive health program, you pay $10,000 and you go to a Mayo Clinic and they have like 5 of them or 6 of them and you basically spend 2 days, I think, or 3 days, and they look at everything of your body and try to diagnose anything? I mean, have you seen this?

Yeah, I looked at doing that.

And what did you— why didn't, why didn't you?

Well, I started looking into it and what I realized is that they were just going to recommend the same thing that I already looked at. Right. When I talked to, I think I talked to a doctor and he said, oh yeah, you're probably going to have to have this special surgery, 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 I didn't do that. That has like a million knock-on effects and all sorts of issues.

Why wouldn't this work?

Well, I think the hard part would be, is it insured? Maybe not. So you're paying out of pocket. Um, 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? Um, I think it could be a great business for one person. It could be a great business for 10 people. Maybe it can scale. I don't know. Um, I like, personally, I like the pregnancy health one more, but I think the other one is more just something that's needed, especially around if you specialized in like cancer or something. So it's like when your dad gets diagnosed with cancer, there's like a clear person to talk to who's like an advisor who's impartial.

Can we, um, I'm just going through this. I think it's interesting. I think that this is, it's, I sometimes I'm partial to 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 want to do that.

I think it's, it's one of those things that is probably a business, but it goes back to like, we have a warped view of it. 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 this 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.

Um, let's talk about that. So you wrote something here that immediately caught my eye, and it's something that I, I've been reading over and over again. It's called What Is Enough Money? And we— you and I talked about this recently. Basically, I told you, um, the goal when I started the hustle was by around 30, I wanted to make enough money that right up front, like, my nut would very passively spit off $50,000 a month in perpetuity. So $50K or the equivalent with, uh, including inflation every single month forever. And to do that, you need like, you want like between 2 to 3% of your portfolio to be able to do that. So what's that? I don't know what, whatever that, do that math. That's that minimum. But that was my goal. And yeah, I mean, I, I, I did it. Um, And you started talking to me about what is enough money. So what were you going to say here?

Yeah. I mean, I loved— you came back to me and you just said, like, to me, enough money is like $25,000 to $50,000 a month in perpetuity with very low risk.

I said $50,000. And the reason I said $50,000 is I spend way less than that, but I want it to be incredibly conservative.

Yeah. So you'd 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 want to be a billionaire or whatever. And it's like, well, what do you really want? It's like, well, I really just want to be able to like do whatever I want every month. And let's be honest, $50K a month, even $25K a month is enough to do whatever you want for the rest of your life. And so people 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 used the athlete, like the athlete thing, the example before of like Olympic athletes. 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 45. 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 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, um, the people I'm jealous of are the people who have $10 to $25 million in a conservative passive investment. They've paid off their house and they're just set and they have a great balanced lifestyle. Um, 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 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 always, I always want, as soon as I have like freedom, I fill myself up again, right? And I'm trying to crack that right now of like, what's driving that? Is that fear? 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. Um, like, you want to— it's all— it's rooted in a fear of, am I good enough to do— like, I want to come in. It's 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 this—

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, 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 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 or 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 at 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 3 or 4 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.

You have a cool quote here. Most successful people are just walking anxiety. Disorders harnessed for productivity. I completely agree. I think there's this— I have some— a friend was telling me about this book I'm going to read, but basically they said something like a lot of great leaders who we look up to have horrible personality disorders, you know, or horrible flaws. So for example, JFK was addicted to a painkiller because he was He had a lot of issues and he was addicted to drugs. Abe Lincoln, he tried to kill himself a couple of times and he was very suicidal and he had horrible depression. Same with Theodore Roosevelt, horrible depression. His wife and his newborn daughter died on the same day. He had a— he was very sad. And but these types of personalities are really good during wartime. They're good because it gives them— they're like a dog that has to chase a car. And they feel comfortable in that, in that mode. And when I see you saying that you have to do the next thing, and also that successful people are a walking 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? Um, like, why would I say, like, well, the most successful people are just have 10 to 20 years sitting, and, and I should feel guilty about wanting to do shit all the time? I'm like, well, because I'm just 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 going to change that in your brain unless maybe you take like some drug or something like that.

Yeah.

So 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 can 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 as well as family and friends and exercise. But if you take away the work part, I don't really do very well. I kind of need 3, 4 hours of work every single day. And so I think there's just this natural yin 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, Ooh, I have white space. I can do more stuff.

What about, um, this photo booth business?

So that I was going to talk about like someone who I really admire, and this is just, this is genius. So I met this guy probably 5 or 6 years ago, uh, really interesting local serial entrepreneur. And, um, he has this business that's a passport photo booth, right? And in Victoria, there's a passport 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. 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 3 or 4 businesses. But he also just like mountain bikes and surfs all the time, and seems to like do whatever he wants, 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? 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've hacked it, you 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 3, 4 hours a day.

So why do you have a personal scorecard? What is this?

Uh, 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, then we'll be like, okay, we got to change something. So some of them are like, 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 want to do? Have you had more than 2 hours of calendar scheduled time per day? Are you reading interesting books? Are you proud of your body? You know, just like basic stuff that encompasses your life. And it's been really, really interesting and useful. 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 2,000 words. Did you write this?

What the hell? Are you serious?

It's 18. It's 18 or 19.

Jesus. That's crazy.

Did you write this?

Yeah. Yeah. I didn't write the research on the Billy of the Week, but I wrote the rest. That's crazy.

Yeah, so we're going to save this and we're going to have to come back and talk about it all because we also asked people on Twitter. So we got a bunch of questions about Meta Lab, uh, building a Meta Lab in India. Of course, we got tons of newsletter questions. We got tons of tax questions, which is kind of an interesting one. And then of course we get the same question of like, what would you do if you started now? Um, we'll, we'll actually answer them next time. So hopefully we can record on Tuesday. I don't know if you're available, but, uh, when your, your episodes are some of the most popular. Um, this month we're going to cross 600,000 downloads and, uh, 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, I'm more of a fan than a co-host.

I just love coming on because 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 remember listening to you guys like 2 years ago and you were like my only podcast subscription basically. So it's awesome to see you getting so big. It's wicked.

Yeah. Last week we were ranked 14. The goal by the end of the year was top 10. I think that we're cracking the code. I think there's a world where when you think of like business podcasts, it'll be like, of course, like Jocko, cause he's like up there. It'll be Tim Ferriss cause he's been the best for a while. And then there's Guy Raz. He's been the best for a while, but I think there's a world where we're going to be up there, um, 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.

Awesome. No, I love doing these. So fun. Uh, thank you, dude. Well, let's do, yeah, next week let's do an AMA or whatever.

And yeah, we'll do it.

We should get Sean on and do, do a full-on AMA.

We're going to, I'm going to ask him, his baby's just now old enough where, uh, maybe he's, he's, he isn't having to do it. Yeah. He's getting his life back. So we're going to do it. Sean and I are in Austin on June 3rd and then Miami June 4th, and then you want to come and travel and do some shit with us.

So I just— the Canadian border, I've got a mandatory 14-day quarantine, uh, but they're going to reopen soon. So once it's reopened, I'd love to do a live.

Great, we already have it all lined up, and, uh, um, Daddy HubSpot will foot the bill, and we're gonna go open bar. All right, thank you, Andrew. This is awesome. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back. Life!