My Plan to Make $100,000,000 In The Next 10 Years

Um, can I— let me ask you a quick question before we wrap up. Getting wealthy, like we're talking 9 figures liquid net worth wealth, getting wealthy, is it, is it really hard to do it just from cash flow, or do you think you have to sell, sell something, sell a business, sell real estate, sell something, capital gains versus income?

You're saying liquid, so not paper, not, not, not your paper net worth.

Liquid, which includes things that could be traded in 30 days.

Um, very hard, very hard to do just off cash flow, I believe. Um, I think, you know, it's just much slower, right? Because you can— I mean, just look at the basics, right? Like, when you sell something, you're gonna sell it for some multiple of the free cash flow that it's gonna generate for you, right? And so, so just by definition, 10 or 20 years where sometimes it's 5x, sometimes it's 10x, sometimes it's 20x, sometimes it's 3x, whatever. There's different multiples for different industries, but like fundamentally it's a multiple, which is a multiplier on how fast you're gonna get the money, the value out. So let's say to get to $100 million, uh, whatever number of years that would take, you then have to divide that by 5. And that's like how fast at minimum you could have got there just selling the, the asset. and getting and taking the 5x multiple, right? So, so, you know, of course you can get there, but do I know ways you can get there with the same speed? I don't think so. Cause even those are like, I take the cash flow, I invested in a thing, and then that thing grows faster and like I can sell my stake in that.

So, you know, because it's like you, you have a choice. So you could spend your time, you know, you could spend, uh, your time building a service or some type of business where you can make significant cash flow, $2, $3 million a year. Not work that much, but it's not necessarily an asset that could be sold. So there's a few businesses like this, or it could just be like, um, like the way the, this podcast gets paid. Like, it's not like a particularly, or maybe, but maybe the podcast isn't a good example, but it's not, you know what I mean? Not necessarily an asset like your Maven course. Your Maven course is not an asset that could be sold, but it could potentially make many millions of dollars a year versus you just say, you know what, screw it. I'm not doing that because I have to build a business that could sell. So do you prefer, do you think, cash flow or, or, or an entity, an asset that is independent of you and can be sold?

Um, I don't know. I don't think do I prefer is really the right way to think about it. It's like you need both, right? Like for example, um, I, you need both for two reasons. One is maybe you're gonna use the cash flow to invest, right? Maybe what you're gonna do is you're gonna buy great assets and let them compound over time. Well, where are you gonna get the cash flow to begin with, right? When we had Andrew on last week, he's like, I, I took the cash flow from the design agency of Metalab and I used it to buy majority stakes in all these other businesses and then let those compound over 10 years and like boom, you know, so he reached, you know, that goal and more doing that. And so, you know, maybe you need the cash flow to make those investments, right? Like if you, if you have no cash flow, how are you gonna invest in anything? And secondly, I like to live a good lifestyle. So sometimes cash flow businesses are great because it's like, Yeah, sure, compounding is awesome, but so is, you know, like fucking, I don't know, Gucci shoes or whatever. I choose your— choose your thing you're into. Like, yeah, Gucci shoes. Like, sometimes those are better than like this.

Yeah, dude, whenever I hear Buffett talk about the long term and like patience, I'm like, bitch, you're like 95. Like, there is no long term. There is— you don't have patience. You shouldn't have patience anymore. You should have like— you should immediately spend whatever you want to spend. There is no such thing as a long-term view for you.

Sam Parr. Let's see, like, the headline: Sam Parr: To Warren Buffett, bitch, you're 95. There is no long term.

You're right. I think about—

he needs to pivot his strategy.

Well, I'm just like, you know, like, if you want to do what makes you happy, fine. But like, and Bezos talks about this too, he's like, a long time. Like, I mean, you don't really— who cares? Like, you know, just live life how you want to live. You got it. Yeah, so I've always— it's like, why are you delaying? It always pissed me off. I'm like, why are you delaying to have the best time of your life when you're like old and don't even want to do shit? Like, you don't have to do that anymore.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And you know, some people are happy along the way. That's, that's fine. But like, yeah, I feel like you had it. I feel like you asked me this question because you had an opinion or a story. So let's just skip that part because I think you have a good opinion or story on this.

I don't have a, no, I don't have an opinion yet, but I'm like, with my life now, it's like, I can, I, I think that in, I think in 6 to, in a, I think in a matter of 6 months, I could probably create a business from scratch that does $1 million a year in profit. It would be based off of like my image. I'm not saying I have that. I'm just saying like, I, I, I'm sure I could do that. Plus with like a couple other side projects, I think I could very realistically have $2 or $3 million a year in cash flow. Easily. But very, but yeah, easy. And maybe I do already have that. I'm not, I don't even wanna say I do or do not, but I, but like, if you did, that would've been a weird way to say it.

It would've been a weird hypothetical, but okay, let's continue on.

I got some cool shit going on, I'll say. But, and I'm thinking about where do I spend my time? And I'm like, is it actually worth it? Like, or should you just not care about cash flow and build something that's like much bigger that you could sell? Uh, I don't know. I'm just trying to figure out, I'm like, where do you actually spend time? The real answer is what gives you most joy.

Yeah, exactly. And, and like, uh, whether you don't work backwards from, do I want cash flow or do I want long-term, you know, capital gains? That's not like the starting point of a decision. Um, you kind of just need to make sure you're winning in one way or the other. Uh, don't be weak in either area or like, don't be weak in both basically is like the way to do it. Like for example, you could buy a home in San Francisco. You're going to have terrible income from that property. It's not a good income property because in most places, San Francisco, your rent— the rent you could charge somebody is not gonna outpay the mortgage plus— yeah, it's gonna make a 3% cap, but you can go buy, you know, some home in whatever, you know, Houston or something like that. It can cash flow $1,000, $2,000 a month, and it's good income property, but it's, you know, gonna appreciate super fucking slow. Whereas the San Francisco home, you know, in 10 years is gonna have, you know, whatever, more than doubled in value. And so, you know, it's a— there's appreciation properties and income properties, same thing. Like I think you just do whatever gives you the kind of whatever's, whatever gives you juice today and you think might give you juice going forward. And then you gotta say, all right, before I do this, I gotta make sure it's gonna be strong in either one of these. Either it's gotta be awesome for cash flow or it's gotta be awesome for, for, uh, appreciation. And if it's awesome for cash flow, basically I'm just gonna use the cash flow to buy assets that are gonna appreciate with somebody else doing the work instead of me doing the work. It's kind, you kind of end up at the same point either way.

Yeah, I don't know. I've just been thinking about like how to spend time. You know who's killing it and has done a really good job of like putting off making cash is our friend Nick Huber. I am an investor, and so I get to see some of the numbers of his storage deals, and I don't think he crushed it like in terms of personal cash flow for a long time. But like the way that things have compounded, I'm like, oh, holy moly, if you just eat shit for like 6, 7 years and pick the right asset, things look really cool.

Yeah, yeah, I think he's done great. And also, I think he is like a— I think he personally has great terms with his investors, meaning like, I think it's quite favorable to him.

Yeah, incredibly.

Not in a bad way, but like, he makes sure he gets to eat, right? Whereas at the beginning, if you have no capital, you're like, you know, you sort of make a deal with the devil in a way where you're like, all right, I'm going to take no management fees, no acquisition fees, and a low carry. And I think now he's like, look, I'm good and I know it, So I'm going to take a higher fee, higher, higher acquisition fee, and I'm going to take, you know, my, my healthy carry. So, you know, you know, good on him. I think a lot of people in real estate are able to do that pretty well. I know somebody who's crushing it in real estate and they, they do just that. They have like a, you know, 50% carry on the deal or something, something crazy. And they're like, yeah, because my deals are awesome hits and I win. So like, it doesn't make sense for me to do this at any less than that.

And I'm like, there's this, uh, that, that's like next level winning.

All right. And then I forgot to tell you this, but this is the most important thing. Uh, I can't believe we didn't talk about this earlier, to be honest with you, because if you're listening to this and you like what you're hearing right now and you haven't gone and subscribed to the My First Million podcast, wherever you get your podcasts, that, that's the thing you gotta do. There's nothing more important than doing that right now. And don't do it cuz I said to do it. Do it because you want to do it. Do it because that's who you are.

There's this awesome— you know who Foo Fighters are? You know Dave Grohl? Dave Grohl's the lead singer of Foo Fighters. Yeah. And they've been writing hits forever. And before that, he was the drummer in Nirvana. So he's like just wrote hit after hit for a long time. And someone asked him about— he's like, you know, you write hits and what's your process? And like a fan was asking about old music and he— but he stopped. He goes, wait a minute, let me cut you off here. He goes, I don't write deep cuts. I write hits. And he would just like, he's like, everything I write, I write it to be a hit. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, but it is, it's all meant to be. And that's like your real estate friends. He's like, I write hits. That's why he gets that 50% carry.

Exactly. Exactly. And respect. I respect somebody who's like, I'm playing the game and I play to win the game. You know, I'm not playing something else. I'm not going to tell you I'm not playing the game. I am playing the game and I'm playing to win. That's actually like, uh, I really respect people who just clearly play the game and they're like open about it and like, yeah, I play the game, I'm playing to win, and here's, you know, like, good. If you, if you dislike the game or dislike me, that is your, your choice. And I actually dislike people that are the like, uh, virtue signal types where it's like they are playing the game but they'll do anything in their power to like make it look like they're not playing the game. And there's a lot of that, like in Silicon Valley there's a lot of that Here's how that plays out that I see. There's person starts the company, bullshits about like why they're doing the company or why this problem is the problem they decided to spend their life on. It's like, no bitch, you're like, you're, you know, you're doing this because it's good business, not because you really wanted to help, you know, small to medium-sized enterprise businesses save money on whatever, right? Like that wasn't your actual intention. You probably like that, that you have happy customers and that they're good, you know, you're helping them. But like, let's be real, we're taking away the money.

You'd want cloud. Have you ever seen on Silicon Valley, we're saving the world one cloud processor at a time, or some bullshit? It's like, yes, and then they're like, they're like, at the— they're like, someone calls them out, they're like, dude, this is all rich guy. Like, Kid Rock just was the singer for the, for the, for the show, and he's the poorest guy here.

Yeah, exactly. And so So I think in Silicon Valley you see that a lot. You'll also see that with the origin story about like, you know, why they decided to do this. You're like, oh, are you sure you decided to do this because, you know, your cousin got diagnosed with this, you know, rare thing and that's why? Or, or was it that you ran paid ads at 5 different products and this was the one with the highest click-through rate? Cause I'm pretty sure when I was talking to you it was, this one's the highest click-through rate. All right, cool. That's my company. Right? Like there's a lot of that.

Um, so the other one is, The guy who started Dollar Shave Club, um, I saw an interview with him and some of the times he's like, I started Dollar Shave Club because I was just sick of going to Walgreens and I had to ask them to like open up the razors. And then another interview, he was like, he's like, man, my father-in-law is like crazy and he likes just to buy random stuff. And one time he bought a shipping container full of cheap razors and we just had to figure out a way how to sell them all.

Yeah, exactly.

And that's why we did it.

Exactly. And you know, I'm in the 2% of the population. I think you are too, where we're like, oh sweet, respect for trying to flip the storage container and then realizing there's a business there versus like, you know, the, the, the kind of like the Shark Tank version of the story, which was like, we were just so fed up with our options. Right. And like, I get, again, I get it. I've done that. I might do that again, but am I a little bit disgusted by it? Yes. Uh, same thing with, same thing with, I'll do that usually when I have business partners, not when it's my own business. Um, like when I'm, when I'm the only— when I get to just be a cowboy on my own, I'll just do what I want. Be like, yeah, I don't care if this is bad for the business, it's fine.

The other day I ate a— I ate an entire jar in one sitting of peanut butter from— it was the Jiffy cheap shit, and I just felt so bad about myself, but I didn't regret it. And that's kind of like how you feel.

But I wanted to do hillride stuff with my friend.

Mission statements are like a pint of Ben Jerry's. Like, if it feels good doing it and you may not regret it, but but you feel guilty about yourself.

The other version of this is like people who on Twitter are like, they call themselves like shit posters or they're like, you know, they basically, they basically try to signal like, you know, I'm not going to just— I'm not one of those investors who blogs about content and tries to—

I'm a cool guy.

I'll tell you the real deal and I'll make jokes about it. It's like they're the ones trying to carefully curate their brand more than anyone. If you actually meet these people, they're like so conscious about their brand, uh, and like, you know, how, how many followers they're getting and like how viral their stuff is going. And like, they are, you know, like, uh, they're, they are so meticulous about that stuff while trying to give off their appearance. It's like Bed Head, right? It's like, oh no, I just woke up like this. It's like, oh, are you sure you don't use a product called Bed Head that like, you know, like makes it look slightly messy but like, you know, you're actually caring where every strand of hair goes? And so, you know, I have more respect for like, um, people who are like, yeah, like, you know, like Pomp or Sahil or whether they're like, yeah, like people really like to hear about Bitcoin. So I just tweet Bitcoin shit all the time. It's great. Like, I like Bitcoin and they like Bitcoin, so I'll just tweet, like, I'll just set up a calendar and I'll be like, yeah, I'm gonna tweet Bitcoin stuff because I figured if I get a big Bitcoin following, that'll be really, really good for me. Or like, you know, Sahil's like, yeah, I put it, I put out these threads, uh, about these like finance topics. Cause I think I'm good at it and they go viral and then it gives me all these dope connections. Versus like, you know, I just want, like, I feel that knowledge is, um, you know, knowledge needs to be accessible for all and free.

And that's why we need to democratize knowledge.

Yeah. I wanna democratize financial knowledge. Like I used to work on Wall Street and the insiders know things that the rest of us don't. So I quit my job and started writing Twitter threads about finance to democratize finance. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. You, you didn't do any of that. You wanted followers. And so you did what it took to get followers.

Have you noticed how the word democratize is the new disrupt?

Democratize is like, you know, what is democratized? It's the new democratize is the new like, no offense, but that's a democratized democratize is like about to fool you. This is good for me and not good for you, but I'm gonna fool you by saying I'm democratizing something for you. Buy my service, buy my product. Yeah, I do all that. I do this myself. I, again, I know it. I spot it because I got it right. I've done all this before with my e-commerce brand. I've done the origin story thing with my fund. I do this too. Like, my fund is called the All Access Fund because I wanted to give access to every— access to all to be able to invest in the deals I do. Do I feel good that other people get access to good Silicon Valley deals? Yeah, sure. Is that why I did the fund? Fuck no. That's not why I did the fund, right? I did the fund because I was writing checks and I wanted to write bigger checks and more checks into more companies and more. And that was more than my personal bankroll would allow. So I raised money from other people to do that. And I get, you know, like, and so now I get to write more checks into more awesome companies. That's why I raised the fund, not because I wanted to democratize access to like, you know, angel investing for like, you know, a, a middle school teacher in Tennessee.

I can't stand democratize it. We're going to democratize this by only charging you $50,000 for this piece of clothing instead of them like I've seen people like, we're gonna democratize knowledge, and it's like a $5,000 course. I'm like, uh, not really, dude.

Um, you could democratize these nuts.

What do you think, Ben? Was today, uh, were we with it or what? I thought today was a hit. I thought today was a huge hit. This is, uh, yeah, other than like the Steph Smith episodes or Rob Dyrdek, this is, uh, this is A+ territory.

Great. Are we gonna have to cut out my democratize these nuts?

Yeah, and then so we have to plan the MFM summit. So I agree that making it destination is cool. I have a thing that I— you're gonna have to bleep it, bleep out what I'm about to say, but I know the thing.

I know the thing. Yeah.

Yeah, I got the guy. I got a really like famous house that person might be interested in hosting us.

I don't know if that's just gonna be a dinner, right? Like That's gonna be like—

no, no, no, no, no. We might be able to do a proper thing there, but I don't know if the logistics are gonna work out. So I think— but, but I think that we could do like something outrageous, you know. We have to think about what outrageous means, but I do think we could have something outrageous. I think a cruise ship, I like it. That's a— it's not a bad idea, a cruise ship, or like some type of famous venue, or fuck, we could just go to Hawaii, just do like on the beach in Hawaii. We can figure something out. But we do need to do, I guess, some of the fly out.

Like if people are going to have to travel for it, I think to get the value again, the easiest hack is first make it a couple of days where people get to hang and meet each other. So do it, make it like a 2-day thing. And then, and then secondly, um, just make it already fun if it was just a vacation, if there was no content on top, but it's like, then you combine some content, uh, getting to meet us and getting to meet other people in the community. Plus already it was a good kind of vacation type experience, then that's cool. Right? And I don't know, let's do— bring a fitness component. Bring a— let's bring all the components of the stuff we talk about where there's experiences beyond sitting down and listening to people talk. It's like, why not do a group workout or let's get an MMA guy to take us through a set, take people through a session or something. I don't know, something like that.

Down. All right, let's schedule it. I, I do. Do you like that $500 price mark, price point?

This, I mean, we should do this as an NFT, no doubt. We should make this an NFT and then only the NFT holders can attend and then they could flip their NFT to somebody else if they want to, but make it a limited number of NFTs, uh, for this. Yeah.

All right. That's it. All right. That's the episode.