Sam Parr and Shaan Puri frame the final 70 days of the year as a sprint for productivity and goals. Shaan breaks down his fitness routine and energy tactics. The hosts expose a VC paradox: investors tell founders to go all-in and live lean while their own portfolios are diversified and they pocket guaranteed management fees, like Harry Stebbings' $80 million annual take from a $400 million fund.
Chapters
All right, it's, it's Q4, so I don't know what, whatever day you're gonna hear this, there's about 70 days left in the year. 70 days left in the year. And everybody makes a big deal about January 1st, New Year's resolutions, but I have a different argument. I have an argument that says there's 70 days left in the year, just enough time to actually do the thing, whatever the thing is for you, that's gonna make this year amazing. Today is a wake-up call. 70 days left. It's time for one sprint on one priority to try to make it happen. The one thing you could do, whatever it is, that's going to make your year awesome. So for example, maybe you're trying to get in great shape. The diet starts this morning. It starts now, and we're going hardcore. It's life or death diet mode. If you're trying to— if you really want to, you know, quit your job, start the business, put in your notice, put put in your notice today. Just put it in and see what happens. See how it feels. Just the tip. Whatever you're gonna do, you gotta figure out how you're gonna use this 70-day sprint. If you're trying to, you know, hit your growth goal, if you're trying to raise a round of funding, whatever it is, this is the lock-in time because 70 days is about the perfect amount of time where you could totally shift your life. It's enough time to be honest about how long things take to make, to make a change happen. But it's short enough where you won't lollygag and you will, you're either going to make it happen this year or you're not. And this last 70 days is going to be the make or break. As Frank Slootman, the guy who was CEO of Snowflake and wrote that book, Amp It Up, he goes, priority should be a single word. If I have somebody that tells me their top 3 priorities, all I ask them is, which one is it? And then they get really flustered, but he goes, I believe priority is a single word. And so I highly suggest figure out the one priority, the one thing that if you just did this one thing, the whole year is a win and use the 70 days to do it and wipe everything else off the calendar.
What's your thing going to be?
My one thing for this year, the one thing that if I just did this thing, I could look back and be like, well, I don't care what else happened that year. That happened. And that's all that matters for me. It's getting in the best shape of my life. And so I've made good progress. I'm down about 15 pounds. I would like to get, turn the corner, get the last 10 down by the end of this year. And to do that, I'll need to ratchet up. And really it's not necessarily about pounds, but like I set these habits. I was like, all right, I have these habits that got me this body. If I want that body, I gotta have these other habits. And so I've been trying to change, you know, these 4 or 5 habits, just, just 4 or 5, 4 or 5 of these habits that got me where I'm, where I'm at, where I want to go. And I've probably changed 2 of the 4. So I have the last 70 days to get the other 2 done.
What are the other 2?
So I'll give you the 2 I did and I'll give you the 2 I need to do. So the 2 I did, the first one is planning, planning my, my, the health part of my day at the beginning, first thing when I wake up. So, we both, I don't know if you still do, but I use My Body Tutor.
So she calls me. It's great, right? It's a great service.
Yeah, it's a great service. We have no stake, at least I have no stake in this business. It's, you know, I'm just a big fan of it. So she calls me at 8 in the morning and she says, how did yesterday go? What's today? Blah, blah. But the thing that happens is instead of waking up and just starting my day with my work and my emails and my Slack and like my little computer stuff, no, I start my day with the top priority, the thing I really care about, which is rewiring these habits. And in doing so, I basically stop improvising because the improvising is where I'm just going to make whatever decision happened in the moment. And those decisions are the key thing, right? So my plan in my day, I say, all right, I'm going to eat this, this, and this at these times. I'm going to work out here. And most importantly, we identify like what might trip me up. It's like, oh, I have to take my kids to the gymnastics thing. That's like an hour away. It's at the time I normally eat dinner. So you plan around the grenade. Yeah. It's like, oh, so what are you going to do? Oh, simple. I'll just bring it with me in the car or I'll, uh, I'm going to eat before I go.
Or you'll look ahead, like, 3 days. You're like, all right, on Saturday I've got a birthday party. I know we're going to have cake. I'm going to splurge on that one piece of cake, which means leading up to it, I got to prepare that. I got to be tight today.
So a big part of it was realizing the decision tank, the gas tank of decisions, of good decisions, is full in the mornings, and by the evening it's depleted. And so all my bad decisions happen then. And so I just make all the decisions upfront for what I'm going to do. And then I simply just need to stick to them, which of course not perfect.
Like the daily one. So basically they call you daily. And the reason why that's good is that's when you're like really getting after it. And then the weekly one is like, I use her as like, I'm happy where I am.
They should call it the serious person plan. And then the unserious person plan, like, are you serious about this? Or are you not so serious? If you're not so serious here, do this weekly plan.
And then what's the fourth?
So her first habit, plan all the meals and the workouts upfront. First thing in the morning, make the decision. Then don't make the decisions as you go. Make one decision at the beginning. The second one is what I call the 4-point swing. So if you've ever played basketball, you know, there's this thing that the announcers will say where let's say you had an open shot, you should have made it, you would have scored 2 points, but instead you fumble the ball, the other team takes it and they get an easy shot. And so it was a 4-point swing. It should have been 2, you know, you should have been up 2 and they should have had 0. Instead you missed your 2 and they got 2, right? So 4-point swing. I realized, oh, there's one part of my day that's like the 4-point swing. It's like, it could have gone in my favor and instead it totally wipes me out, which is like, basically for me, it's, I work pretty late. So after my kids go to bed, then I have kind of like this relaxation and I'll do like more work. So I usually stay up pretty late. If I late night snack there and I, so basically it's like, I'm up late. So I sleep, I sleep late and therefore I also, because I'm up late, I eat late and then I—
dude, I started going to bed early just to avoid that situation.
Exactly. It's like, yo, I can't, I don't know if I have the willpower to not late night snack. But I can just go upstairs and go to bed and that's kind of the only thing. And then in the morning, if I'm hungry, great. I make good decisions again. The tank is full. So anyways, those are the two that I've been working on and made a lot of progress on. And then I have two more, which is treat the weekends like the weekdays because my weekends, I was just become a different person. It was fucking Mardi Gras for me. It was like, wait, wait, well, why did I throw away all those habits that I do during the week that are great and just treat the weekends totally differently? So that's silly. Not going to do that anymore. And then I have one more, which is my, so my, my, my sort of like thing that gets me is chips. It's like, you know, sort of like a snack. So it's kind of the root why it's like, well, it's basically the cheapest way to pleasure. It's like super fast. It's right in front of me. It's the fastest way to pleasure. So substituting that with another thing, that's a fast, cheap way to get pleasure, right? So it's like, uh, other things I like to do or other things that feel good in the moment. That's not like some delayed gratification. Instant gratification, just not through a snack, but through whatever, like, you know, take a shower. There's like this other, like, sparkling water drink that I make, whatever, little other things that I could substitute. So doing those substitutes, the weekday and weekend thing is pretty funny.
One time Noah Kagan, he's one of my best friends, and he was like, years ago, he goes, you're the only person I know who doesn't drink, but you're still fat. What the hell?
I had a friend that said the same. He goes, I sold my company. He goes, okay, cool. You're rich now. I'm like, yeah, thanks. And he goes, there's no, you can't be rich and fat. He's like, there's no excuse. If you're poor, you just don't have the time. You can't get the nutritious food and you can't get the gym. Like, okay, understandable. You're rich and fat. That's you. That's all you. So he was like, you can't be rich and fat. It's just a rule. I was like, oh, okay. I felt like I got into some club and they were like, you need to take your shoes off at the door.
It's so funny.
By the way, one thing to finish that food thing. Remember when Brian Johnson came on the first time on this podcast, like before Brian Johnson became like way more famous and like, you know, changed his entire look. So like kind of the before photo Brian Johnson, basically when he came on, he said something, he goes, oh yeah, we fired Evening Brian. And I thought that was just such a good way of saying it. He's like, yeah, we had a meeting of the Bryans. Morning Brian was there. Work Brian was there. Evening Brian was there. We just decided, Evening Brian, you're fucking it up for the rest of us. So you're fired. You no longer get to make decisions. We've taken that power away from you. I just thought that was a great way of saying it.
He did a really good job of— have you read the book 48 Laws of Power? Like, one of the laws of power is like, change your identity occasionally.
And like, occasionally, is that how it says?
They're like, it's a tool. It's like a tool. So for example, the author, he was like, Lady Gaga, like, if you look at like early photos of her, she was like a very normal girl, but she always had like a little weird weird quirky side to her, but he's like, she went all in on it and just changed her identity overnight to be like this kind of like strange person. And then nowadays, by the way, if you see Lady Gaga, she's not actually that weird anymore. You remember that era where she like would wear meat as a dress? Now she like has an album with like Tony Bennett, like a very classic singer. And she's like more of a, like a, you know, whatever she, that would be called like classic beauty versus before she was like artistic.
Pomp when Bitcoin price is up and pomp when Bitcoin price is down. There's two pomps, the tale of two pomps.
And I think Brian Johnson changed his and I thought that that was like a really savvy thing to do. I thought it was great, and I think that I take inspiration from it.
Hey, let's take a quick break to talk about AI. We all know AI, big deal. You see demos all the time of people doing really cool things. But as a business owner, sometimes it's hard to figure out, how do I actually use this? What do I actually do? I've been trying to use it across all my businesses, things like making little prototype websites without needing to hire a coder or writing copy for our website, or I give it a bunch of data and I ask it to analyze it for me. It's been kind of amazing, but the thing I always need is inspiration. I know the tool can do a lot, but it can almost do so much that I'm not really sure what I should actually be doing with it. And so that's why I think it's great that HubSpot has created a report where they surveyed 2,000 global marketing leaders and asked them, yeah, what's separating the high-growth and low-growth businesses and what strategies they're using with AI in their business. You can grab these strategies and apply them to your own business for free. The link is in the description below.
Can I tell you a story that I've been kind of thinking about constantly?
Okay.
All right. So I have to tell you this story about this guy named Jamie Beaton. So Jamie is a 29-year-old from New Zealand. He was raised in a single household in New Zealand, but he's kind of like grown to be probably like the best college kid on earth. So listen to this story. So this guy Jamie, he's raised by a single mother in New Zealand. And I guess if I had to like psychoanalyze him, he probably like has some like rejection type of like, you know, he's not good enough type of vibe that a lot of great, great people who achieve greatness have. And he gets obsessed with school, but particularly with university applications and how to get into like the best university on earth. And so he sets out with a goal to become the most qualified high school student in all of New Zealand. And he like creates this really in-depth strategy. It's like, you know, he's gotta be unique. So he goes and starts two different businesses, one being like a newspaper delivery business, one another being like an iPhone repair business. He focuses on being the best, and so he like strategically picks activities that he can excel in. Then he looks to maximize validation, meaning like whatever he's good at, he wants to like enter into a contest and like win. And then really good academics. So he's like, it's straight A's. And so he like does this like crazy curriculum that he creates for himself. And by the age of 17, he's accepted into 25 universities. So he's accepted into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, Cambridge, Duke. And a bunch of other stuff, but he ends up going to Harvard. But before he gets into Harvard, like, word spreads in New Zealand that this kid is like a wonder kid and he's like the greatest thing on earth. And so he even like hosts like a 230-person talk in New Zealand where all these parents are like, Jamie, tell us how you did this. Like, this is so amazing. So fast forward to today, he's 29 years old. He's got 7 degrees and 1 PhD. He has a Like if you go to his LinkedIn, it literally looks like a fake LinkedIn. Listen to his education. So a bachelor's in applied math from Harvard, a master's in applied math from Harvard, a PhD in public policy from Oxford, two master's from Stanford, a master's in entrepreneurship from Penn, a master's from Princeton, a law degree from Yale, and a master's in global affairs from a university in China. Is that insane?
This is real. Show 12 educations. I've never seen that.
It looks fake. So now while this kid, he's 29 now, but while he was a kid, sophomore in college, he was like, this is kind of interesting what's going on. And so he creates a college tutoring business, which is like kind of like a stereotypical, not stereotypical, but it's like a common story of people who like master the game. They like start these tutoring businesses, but it actually starts working to the point where by the, he's a sophomore in college, it does a million in revenue. And obviously he's interning because that's what great college kids do, but he's interning at Tiger Management, which is like, you know, one of the most prestigious hedge funds in the world. And his boss is like, dude, this is pretty cool. You should like go all in on this. And so he turns his little side business. I mean, it was a million in revenue by the time he was a sophomore. It wasn't that much of a side business, but he turns it into a real business and it's called Crimson Education. And that's like what the story in the Wall Street Journal was about. So Crimson Education does something like $120 to $150 million in revenue. It's valued around $500 million. They have something like 1,000 employees, and it's like the greatest way, I guess, to get into a highly touted university for your kids. And so these, these parents are spending crazy amounts of money, something like $200,000 a year for a handful of the product offerings that they have in order to get their kid into an Ivy League school. And it starts way before high school. We're talking like 5th, 6th grade. You're smiling. Is this ridiculous or what?
So I'm smiling for a couple reasons. First, the headline is great. So it says, the guru who says he can get your 11-year-old into Harvard. And there's a picture of him shaking this Asian kid's hand, which is just hilarious. First, why an 11-year-old into Harvard? All right, that's, that's funny thing one. Two, love the name Crimson Education.
As you know, right?
Big fan of when you hijack the prestige of another thing in a way that's totally legal, the way that you did with Hampton, the way he's doing with the Crimson color for Harvard. Crimson Education, great name. When I Google the name, the very first thing it says, and by the way, this article came out 6 days ago, the very first thing in the Google headline is Crimson Education as seen on the Wall Street Journal. Like, this guy is a fucking prestige hacker. He immediately was like, now it's going to be like as featured on My First Million, right? Like, he's just going to keep grabbing badges from schools, from press, from whoever he can get. So I think that's hilarious. The next thing, the next thing that I find a little bit funny is the premise of this is I will help your kid get into a top university. Is that right? But it's not test prep.
No. So they have, first of all, if you go to, are you on their website? They're offering or like their headline is amazing. 98% acceptance acceptance rate to your top college choice. So listen to like the product. So the product is like pretty ridiculous. Basically, like you remember how I like outlined it to like stick out, you know, like be unique, whatever. Like he has like these, the Crimson education has these like tenets of what you need. So it's like, uh, get amazing grades. So he's like, B's are bombs. You basically have to have like perfect A's. Uh, then he's like, you need to have strong leadership. And so what Crimson does is they definitely tutor people. So I think they have 50,000 students who get tutoring, but dude, they encourage you to do all types of crazy shit. So they encourage you to start a business podcast or rather start a business or start a podcast or go and publish an academic paper. And so they have services that help their students get PR or help their students go and publish research. And so there's one example of a kid who started a podcast and it got so popular that universities started asking to be featured on the podcast. And so that's an example of like things where they try to tell you that you have to have strong leadership. They also say that you have to have a unique profile. And so what he says is, or what Crimson does is they help students find like 10 activities that they're interested in and then helps them be the best at the activities and cut the fat and not be, not participate in things that they're not going to be like the best at. It's like pretty ridiculous. So they offer tutoring, but they also offer like for something like $200,000, they do like really hands-on, like we need you to do this, this, this, and this over the course of a handful of years to increase the likelihood. And it, by the way, it works. Like there's debate over how much it works. Like there's debate where they're like, you know, these kids are like rich, smart kids anyway. Like their parents are going to like force them to get into all this shit anyway. Like, did this actually help? But something like 2% of the students admitted into Brown, Columbia, Harvard, and Penn last year were his clients.
And it says, uh, like this many people get in as verified by Big Four accounting service. Like he's like touting that they, they've been audited on their claims of this. This is pretty wild, dude, because he's like bragging.
He was bragging to the Wall Street Journal reporter like crazy, or not bragging. They were asking him questions and he was like, yeah, like we had 24 people into Yale, 34 marketing funnel, dude. But listen to what he says. He goes, the acceptance letters were certified by PricewaterhouseCoopers and a list of students admitted. So like he, he, he sent Wall Street Journal the thing and it had like the PricewaterhouseCoopers like seal of like, yeah, it's legit.
I hate this. I'm just going to say that out loud. I hate this. But I respect this.
Why do you hate it? For one, I mean, the respect is easy. Like, it's easy.
Like, dog, it's the same reason I hate the Olympics and I respect people. I respect Olympians, meaning this guy is doing the thing. The thing I said was stupid about the Olympics where somebody dedicates 20, 20, 22 years of their life to becoming the best, you know, luge, the luge pusher in the world. And it's like, bro, like, if you had this much talent, why didn't you just apply it to something that's useful?
Dude, what else could you, if you're a luger, what do you just got a big ass and you could like push heavy shit. Like what else are you going to do? The luge is built for you. You can lay down well.
Could have been a famous, you know, person in a rap video. Many, many options. OnlyFans. You had better options on the table. No, but seriously, like the sort of like game embracing the system so much that you try to game the system for this arbitrary university. Application thing, it's just, it's like dialed up to level 20. There's something off-putting about that to me. I don't know. I guess like, I just don't, like, I think most college educations and as I wear a Duke sweatshirt, most Ivy Leagues and the admission process, I think it's all pretty bogus and I don't think it has a very high correlation to like, it's the wrong game, right? What is the phrase? Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. I think this is playing stupid games to win a stupid prize. However, I get it and I respect that this guy has preyed on the fears and the hopes and the dreams of these Tiger parents to be like, hey, give me $200,000. I'll make sure your kid has a, gets the right logo on their resume here.
I hear you and a lot of me agrees with you, but let me just make the argument against you. First of all, the, in your group of people, the Indians in part have thrived in America because of the emphasis on not just on education, but like being the best. So like there's definitely power to it, but you also went to Duke. I didn't go to Duke. My wife went to an Ivy League school. So I hang out with a lot of these like smart people like you and her and that type of education. It's on one hand, it's sort of like a rich person telling you rich, it doesn't make you happy to be rich. And you're like, yeah, let me, let me figure it out on my own. Like, let me get there and I'll decide. Yeah. But the second thing is I actually think that there's huge amounts of tangible benefits. The education, that's normal. What are those? Will from Good Will Hunting say, like, just, I can get that for like $15 in late fees from a library to learn the same shit as you. But, uh, like your network, partially because, mostly because San Francisco, to be honest, but a lot of it because of Duke and Sarah's network because of Penn, like it was so much more global than mine was at a small rinky-dink school in Nashville, Tennessee. Like you guys thought so much bigger. The people who you were with were so much more global. They were so much more prestigious and, and, and in a good way. And so I actually think that playing the game to go to a top 20 university is probably worth it to play the game to win, to play the game and not go to one of these amazing schools. I actually don't think it's worth it. Yeah.
I'm not saying necessarily that going to top school is not worth it. I guess what I'm saying is the amount of energy and sort of the manufactured nature of this, it's sort of like the way that PR, it's like, ah, it's, I guess it's good to be featured, but like PR is sort of this, the process to get a bunch of press is often a very sticky process.
Yeah. You're hating the game.
Yeah, exactly. I hate the game. And I think that in this case, like dedicating your life to manufacturing this perfect resume that's optimized for the Harvard admission system just doesn't seem like the good, like the right use of talent and time. And so, you know, that same person, if they actually just did what they were interested in and, you know, like followed their actual curiosities and passion, I think that's just, you know, a better, better way to live. But, you know, No, I'll get off my high horse now. Let me just, let me get a stool so I can get down.
Did you, did you see a photo of this guy? He looks like, uh, exactly like I want him to look like. He looks like a student still at 29. Like he looks, uh, he looks smart, I guess. Like he looks Ivy League. Um, did you have a college admission like counselor or anything like that?
Uh, yeah, like our high school had a college counselor who I went in and they go, okay, so where do you want to go to school? I said, I want to go to Duke. And they go, you should lower your expectations. And I was like, wow, that's the opposite of what I think somebody's supposed to say in your job. Like, aren't I supposed to dream big? What's going on here? And he's like, yeah, it's pretty tough out there. So, you know, what else we got on the list? Let's go down lower on the list and see what we could do. 'Cause my grades weren't the best.
And then you rubbed it in his face. Did you, but did you have like a tutor?
No. but I did take like, you know, GMAT or whatnot, GMAT, like the SAT Kaplan, like test prep. Like I studied for the SATs. Like that was what I did.
I did not have any of that stuff, but when I was reading this article, they said roughly 25%.
Did you take the SATs?
No, I did the ACT.
Okay. So you took the ACTs. Did you do a test prep thing?
No, I took it one time my junior year, I think, or maybe I took it twice my junior year and I got a combined score, I think of 28, which is like a combined score, like on both tests. No tries. I think, doesn't it? Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought they take like, oh, like math and verbal or whatever. Yeah. Like you get like the best of each try and they like combine it. I think I got a 27 or 28, which is like 85 percentile. I think. Did you do well on it?
I did good on it. I was good. I was a good test taker. I wasn't good in school, like the consistency of every day. So you, you know me, I'm not good with the everyday stuff, but if it was like, it's time to do the big, the big performance, I could do that part.
Well, that's what did you get on the SAT? You have to brag about it than if you did good.
I think I got the equivalent of like a— because they had changed the scoring system to like the 2400 or whatever, but I got the equivalent of what now is like a, like a 1500 basically.
What? I don't know SAT, but let me look it up.
It goes up to 1600. 1600 is perfect, 1500 is like excellent, and like, you know, 1300—
dude, it says that's in the 98th percentile.
Yeah, yeah, it was a really good score. It's like you missed like a couple questions basically. Did you try? Yeah, yeah, I tried. I took— I basically for Like 60 days before the test, I just took 2, 2 practice tests a day. And this essay is like a 6-hour test. So I took a 6-hour test in the morning. I took a break, I ate, whatever. And then I took another 6-hour test or a 5-hour test, whatever it was in the evening. And I just did that every day for like 30 days during the summer. And then I took the test, then I took the SATs.
Well, you should have went and started one of these like companies on how to like master that shit because I didn't realize how big these, I didn't realize how big this was. They said that, um, like 25% of people going to Harvard this year, they had one of these like tutors. And then it goes up even higher that if your parents, if your parents have a household income of at least half a million dollars, half of them use these types of tutors. And yeah, I didn't realize how much of a game or how you could game this. So like you could, you could really kick ass at it if you just like, well, if you have rich parents for one and two, if you just like hire coaches, I didn't, I didn't buy into that, but now I do.
So you're going to do this type of stuff?
I think that if my children show an academic, like if they're, if they're good at academics, then yeah, I would encourage them to do this. If they're only mildly decent at academics, I would say like, let's consider different alternatives. I think I, dude, I'm like kind of an elitist. I think that like these fancy schools, like what you went to, should be like designed for like the, for like the academic class and like the rest of us, like plebs. Like I, I think I should have gone to like a trade school. Or a state school. I think I should have gone to like a $15,000 a year University of Missouri and like explored versus going into debt of $150 grand to go to like a non-top university. I think that's ridiculous.
Yeah, I think that's right.
All right. I have one and you have a few. Which one do you want to do?
Let's do a quick one on this Ken Fish thing. I don't know how much I have to say. It just kind of fascinated me. So let's see if there's something interesting here. So I was at a breakfast and somebody was talking to me about a business idea that they were doing or that they'd done in the past. I was like, man, that sounds like a good idea. Where'd you get that idea from? And he goes, oh, it's the Fisher Investments model. What's Fisher Investments? And he goes, oh, you don't know Ken Fisher? He's like, you got to look this guy up. So I go down this rabbit hole and who is Ken Fisher? So basically he's a billionaire money manager. So he's my Billy of the Week.
Big time billionaire. Like, like 11, 15 billion. Yeah, exactly.
And he basically created a simple firm. So it's an investment advisor, money manager type of firm called Fisher Investments. And he grew it over the years to where they now manage upwards of $275 billion assets under management. So $275 billion with a B. They got 3,500 employees. They, uh, and they ended up selling to private equity. So they sold to Advent. They sold up, not the full amount, but they sold at a $12.5 billion valuation. And that was the first outside capital raise. So this guy basically bootstrapped his way to a $12 billion company. And the question is, how did he do it? What did he do? And so this guy's story in, in the, I guess the simple terms is his dad was a finance guy. He actually wrote a book that was kind of popular called Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, which By the way, when I went to Mohnish Pabrai's house, he, I asked him to recommend, you know, 4 or 5 books off his wall. And that might've been one of them. I remember seeing it in his, in his library and Warren Buffett called that book a major influence on his career. So that was his dad. What he did was he left, he went out and he started his own firm. And the key is this guy is basically a marketing master. So what he did was instead of trying to, I shouldn't say instead of, but like most people who are great with investments or money management. There's a certain profile of a person and that person typically doesn't have incredible direct response advertising skills.
By the way, it's typically the opposite. A lot of people who are in this industry are the opposite of extroverted and they kind of like want to be in a hole and just not talk to anyone and they don't advertise at all.
And it's, uh, so when, when they did this deal, some of the numbers came out and basically these guys are spending $60 million a year on marketing, which sounded like a ton to anybody else in the money management space. And to him, he was like, that's nothing. He goes, I get the question, why do you advertise so much? He goes, because we have no market share. They go, you have over $100 billion in assets under management. He goes, that is nothing. Have you seen the size of this market? We're just the biggest grain of sand in the sandbox, but we're still just a grain of sand. We have 0.1%, if that. And so he said, we spend about 6% of our revenue on marketing. So that's still not a lot. They spend $60 million a year. And so they're doing about $1 billion a year in revenue. And he basically created this system of this marketing system. And so you can go watch his ads. And I went and watched a bunch of his TV ads. And what he says is like, he's like, well, there's, we broke it down. So he's like, there's 6 mental profiles of people of how they think of their retirement and their savings and investing. And so they break out the 6 psychographic profiles. You have, you know, let's say the grandma who just doesn't want to lose it all. You have the guy who's stashed away in his 401 and he's looking for, he thinks he should, he feels like he should be doing more, but he doesn't know exactly what. And he's pretty distrustful with most people, with, you know, people who come to him. And so they have these profiles and then they started running ads. They do focus groups. They try to figure out which ads are working. And there's little nuggets along the way that they were like, why do you use, they were like, why do you use your face in the ads? You know, do you feel like there's some risk with would it make it harder to sell the business? He goes, because we found that clients want to, the clients want to believe that there's someone who wakes up in the morning and gives a darn, that there's a person, not an institution who cares. That's why we use my image. Because here's Ken, he's 68 years old. He gets up in the morning and he cares. That's what I need to convince you of. And then he talked about how, um, they're like, you know, what did you learn from your, you know, your advertising? Your, because they're very scientific about it. He's like, well, one thing, for example, we learned that men's faces do better than women's. Everybody told us we should be using female faces. That's going to appeal more. Not in our testing. Our testing shows that men's faces are going to convert better than female faces.
Ken, there's a famous ad where it's an outline. Um, you know how the Wall Street Journal has photos of their authors that are like dots? It's like a, it's like a sketch actually. It's a, it's a sketch out of dots. Yeah, whatever. He buys Outbrain ads and Taboola ads and they would always see a dotted profile photo where you think it looks like a Wall Street Journal article and then you click and it goes to Fisher Investments. Right. And so that's how I first learned about 'em. 'Cause I'm like, these guys, Fisher Investments, they're following me everywhere on the internet.
Well, so if you click one of those, they're great with headlines. So for example, you click one of those Outbrain ads, those Taboola ads, you're going to go to a page that's just a video. There's no navigation, there's no nothing. And the video's called Debunkery: Seeing Through Wall Street's Money-Killing Myths. And it's a 12-minute video that you're going to see where he debunks Wall Street myths. And this type of like BuzzFeed headline stuff isn't what you're going to find from most money managers. Most money managers would cringe at that. They don't know how to do those. They don't have the team in place. Like you've talked about Agora, for example, he's basically agorified money management by putting out really compelling, juicy content and then advertising it everywhere. So they spend a ton of money on ads. They're on Fox News or on Forbes or on Wall Street Journal. They're on MarketWatch. Um, you know, they're basically, they have this profile. They're like, we're looking for somebody who's got a $500,000 retirement portfolio. They don't want the get rich quick ad. And then you look at their ads and it'll say, want to retire comfortably? If you have $500,000, download this guide by Forbes columnist and money manager Ken Fisher's firm. It's called The Definitive Guide to Retirement Income. And then there's a picture of a guy on horseback, like a dude who's like ready to retire and like, get out of the office and be on horseback. Or he'll have an ad, like I have one here on, I'll put these up on YouTube so you can see the ads, but like his Outbrain ad says, what does your net worth say about when, say about how you'll retire? So it's kind of like a personality quiz. Like, what does your net worth say about how your retirement's going to go? And it's a picture of a man and a woman on a boat, like Titanic.
Dude, this is so good. I'm looking at it now.
I mean, like, I want to show you this. Here, just, I'm going to screen share this real quick.
It works by the way, because I have to assume that his product is good, right?
Like, I don't know. We'll see. I don't have a strong opinion on that. Look at this landing page though, designed for conversion. He's got the 15 Minute Retirement Plan as a book and it's an arrow and there's a drag and drop like box. It's like, where should you get it? Get it right here. Get my free quote. Right. And then you got Ken Fisher below. Here's a, here's a white guy you could trust. And I just thought this guy's marketing is just excellent. I think it's to be studied. I think it's extremely effective, especially with the crowd that he's going for, which is kind of like the 50 and up crowd. So studying this guy's ad library was pretty insightful. And it also just brought up an interesting idea, which is a lot of people, when they're great at marketing, they go into spaces that them and their friends are already in, which is often like D2C e-commerce or marketing agencies, like you are being a, you're trying to be a great marketer in a sea of great marketers. I think what the genius of this guy is, is he said, how do I be, you know, just, you know, 2 notches above average at marketing, but go into a space where nobody knows anything about marketing, right? Or everybody is like doing a very rudimentary playbook. And so that's where I think the opportunity is. Like if you go do this in the senior living space, It's like the people who own and operate senior living businesses are not the same sharks that you're going to get trying to sell, you know, uh, handbags on the internet because those people, the people who sell handbags on the internet, they're world-class marketers. That's why they're able to sell, you know, a handbag for, you know, 10x the cogs.
And the other thing is that when people see these ads, they think, does this work? I can't believe this works. First of all, yes, it works. It does. It works for everyone. It's not just like old, like you kind of made a comment like only older people are into this. I think this always works. This type of stuff works really well regardless of the age. But when like a brand advertising guru who lives in Brooklyn, New York, who wears Common Project shoes, they see this type of shit and they think this is fucking lame, I should make my website look flashier. When in reality, a plain white website that has just long-form copy of like 3,000 words can oftentimes, more often than not, convert better than a flashy website.
So let me read you the last few notes I have here. So he's been a Forbes columnist for like 20-plus years. So he was like, he's basically content marketing, right? Like what we do and what we get a lot of credit for, which is like, well, you build an audience, you build a brand and that helps you with distribution. This guy has been doing that for 30 plus years. He wrote several books. So he wrote Super Stocks and other ones. He has an army of salespeople that cold call investors and they call, they talk about this basement, this basement of like cold callers that are just sitting there and people report that like, dude, I signed up for this free guide once I read it. And then they've just been badgering me for like years ever since. And they keep calling me, trying to get me to invest with them. He says that everybody else relies on referrals from other partners. They don't think about the broader world. How do we get people calling us? That was their goal. And they have estimated about $14,000 CAC. So it costs them $14,000 to acquire a customer. They spent, uh, you know, just over $60 million on ads back in 2019. They're the 12th biggest spender on financial services. They have like 60,000+ individual investors, plus then they manage another $10 billion+ from pensions, state governments, municipals, et cetera. They charge about 1%, 1.25% in fees. So you could do the math on 1.25% of $250 billion. And then it's hard to gauge the performance. They don't have publicly available numbers for everything, but they In the past, Fisher funds with publicly available numbers have underperformed the market substantially. So they have a Purisma Total Return Fund. It was a mutual fund that had 25% return in 10 years. The S&P 500 index would have been 1,000% in the same time. Yet still, if there's some of the quote was, if his firm is not the biggest RIA, it's close. And so to build the biggest investment advisor firm while not necessarily having the best returns, you know, but being the best marketer is the story here.
Dude, fuck podcasts. I want to do that. This sounds awesome, right? Of course there's a billion reasons why, like, it's a pain in the ass to run, just like everything else is, but that sounds great, dude.
I've been watching Better Call Saul. Do you ever watch this show?
What, and you— what, do you want to become like an ambulance chaser? Isn't he just a lawyer?
No, but— well, yeah, he's a lawyer, but like one of the things they show him doing is like him making his commercials and his ads to try to be, you know, to be like Better Call Saul. And it reminded me so much of this Ken Fisher playbook. And the show makes it seem— the show makes also the hustle he does to like create these commercials is also very fun.
He's nailed the branding. This is cool. I've seen his ads all over the place and I knew he was big. I didn't know they got acquired, so I wasn't able to ever see any of the numbers, but that's amazing.
Well, look, look at— here's some of the— I think this is his own reporting of his performance. 2007, he says, if you bought— this is not their funds, this is like his recommendations. But if you bought all of my, all 60 of my recommendations, you would be up 0.9%. And assuming you lost 1% transaction fees, the S&P 500 is down 0.5%. Okay, so nothing big. 2008, he says, how are my results last year? In line with the market, which is to say not good. 2009.
That's what he said.
Yeah. 2009, I made 65 recommendations. If you put an equal sum in each, you'd be up 44%. The stock market's up 29, 20.9%. 2010, he says your return is 18% versus 12%. But these are like his stock picks, I think, from his Forbes column, which is not the same. That's like his entertainment.
Well, if you have a wealth advisor or whatever this stuff's called, if you have an advisor who promises to make you more than the index, they're lying.
But then what is the point of the advisor?
The point is that like as you grow and get older, it's savvy to think, all right, I need to get less stocks, more bonds. And those mature sometimes. 6, 12, 24 months. So it's like the buying of those, of setting up an estate plan. There's a bunch of administrative stuff that often, but not always, that 1% can kind of pay for itself or like help you. You could also say that they are kind of like a therapist. So when you want to sell stuff, they're like, dude, don't sell it. Don't be an idiot. But there's a bunch of administrative stuff, but outperforming the market is not the main value. And if you have an advisor who says that they're going to outpick, then they're foolish. By the way, do you know who else does this? Is Motley Fool. So the Motley Fool, they have a fund that has well over a billion dollars and it started as a stock picking newsletter and now they've branched out to having a fund. And so they actually have a wealth advisory business that is massive and it was built up the exact same way as Ken Fisher.
Yeah, it's pretty crazy though that you said a billion dollars. This guy's over $250 billion. So somehow Motley Fool, which is like also excellent at online content and it probably has way more traffic does not have anywhere near the same assets under management, which I think is always interesting to look at. You know, when two people pursue the same strategy and one gets a 100x return, you know, sometimes you point to luck or timing or other things, but often it's, you know, it's a business model choice. It's a strategic choice or it's an executional point that's different.
Yeah, this is insane. Mālifu is $1.5 billion. Can I tell you a quick story about, related to something that Elad Gil said?
Yeah.
So he made a comment where we asked him like what he's interested in and he said monuments. And so what he meant was like an example of a monument is the Statue of Liberty or in some ways like the Eiffel Tower, like things that like exist mostly to bring pride to a country, but then also act as like a tourist destination.
And he was saying, you know, why don't we build more of these? What happened to the monuments was sort of the question.
Yeah, he was like, look, when we were up and coming, like we loved building monuments and like they, it gave a sense of pride and it was like good for, like it was like very pro-America and it got people bought in. And I had a guy listen to the podcast and he sent me the deck that he's trying to raise money for a monument that's based in San Francisco on Alcatraz. And so you have to see this. So it's a picture of First of all, I don't know who this, uh, I've never heard of this person, but do you know who Prometheus is? He's like a Greek god. And it's basically like he represents the spirit of innovation and courage for the purpose of building, for manifest destiny, for inborn nobility, which elevates humanity. They want to build a massive statue of him that's 350 feet tall and it's on, uh, the, where Alcatraz is.
And it's like if the Statue of Liberty had like a hot boyfriend. This would be him.
Yes. And that's exactly what it is.
On the other side of the country, he's just holding up a torch just like she is, except for he's absolutely ripped and he's from the movie 300.
And he's got like a Speedo on.
Yes. It's basically a Speedo. Anytime, Tim, to be honest. So like they did not pull any punches as far as the amount of stone and steel that's going into this guy.
And so first of all, I've got to say the obvious that there will never be a statue that touts manifest destiny and inborn nobility and the spirit of courage that's going to sit in the Bay of San Francisco, that, that, that, that, like all the, like, and a shirtless ripped dude. None of that I think will ever happen, but the idea is actually interesting. And so what they want to do is they want to, they're raising $100 million to build this statue on Alcatraz. And so it's 350 feet. And, um, but In their deck, they talk about the money or the revenue and profit of other people, of other statues. So listen to this shit. So the Statue of Liberty does $154 million a year in revenue, $70 million a year of net income. And then you can go down to like Pearl Harbor. Yeah. I mean, hold on. Where is this?
Okay. So Statue of Liberty. That does say that again. That's it. That's mind blowing. So Statue of Liberty, you said. $70 million of net income, $150 million of revenue. So 50%, you know, net profit margins on 4.5 million visitors, each one paying $25 a ticket and $10 of concessions.
It's insane. It's insane. And then it goes down to like Mount Rushmore, which is on the smaller end, which does $50 million in sales and $20 million a year in net income. Or Pearl Harbor, same thing, $50 million, $23 million.
Dude, I was laughing. Why are we not doing this? These are amazing businesses.
That's my point. And so I went and I saw these numbers and I'm like, that's absolutely ridiculous. And it's like amazingly good. And of course, with all things related to like investment decks, you know, you paint the best possible story and who knows if any of it actually is true.
Source cited on this.
There's no source. I looked up some of the stats and like the Statue of Liberty numbers, it does, it kind of checks out where that it is. Plausible that those are the numbers, but they're raising $170 million to build this and their goal is to make $100 million a year in profit. Or like, that's what they say the numbers are. And so you start doing the math and like I said, this is all just some guy drawing this up and like, who knows? Uh, it's the, this is painting the best story ever, uh, of a, of a thing that doesn't exist. But the math is somewhat interesting behind like the, like how this all works.
And you're saying there's a chance.
Yeah. So they're like, if we do this, we're gonna do $94 million a year net income. And so it's actually pretty interesting that like Monument, of course, dude, you're not going to like be able to build this in San Francisco. They're not going to have any part of it.
How much have they raised so far? Do you know? No.
In like when I was Googling it, they have like a Substack and they say things like Joe Lonsdale is on board and like all these like, uh, amazing people are on board. And they have a Substack documenting what they're talking about, but they, I don't think I saw that they said how much they've raised.
I think it's cool that people are doing this. I guess I have a few thoughts. I think it's cool that people are doing this. I hope something like this happens. I am stunned at the profitability of these other monuments. That is, that is my golden nugget for the pod. That, that is amazing. Noted. Okay. Noted. There's, there's something here. This deck, by the way, does not look well made. And I think if you're going to try to pull something like this off, you have to also, like, if you can't pay for a designer for your deck, then I'm not sure I believe that you're going to do this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And like, this is, I wonder how, like, I like when they're going to bed at night talking to their wives. I wonder if they're like saying like, isn't this hilarious that we're trying this? Or is it like, when this thing's built, we're going to be good.
You got to fully believe that you're doing God's work out here.
Yeah, and it could happen, but it's, so it's called, if you want to look it up, I've got no affiliate, I've never talked to these people. It's called the American Colossus Foundation. Kind of funny.
Yeah. Yeah. I think you're right though, that location really matters. Like you have to go somewhere that both has, you know, can be a tourist destination, but has, you need the approvals, right? You can't just get stuck in limbo and San Francisco Bay Area is probably one of the harder places to get some, get approval for something like this.
Dude, San Francisco's the antithesis of a ripped, like, a ripped, like, alpha-looking heterosexual male. Like, this is like not— like, they— I lived in San Francisco for 10 years. This is not exactly what the culture, uh, uh, is about. So I think—
do you remember the art we had on the wall, the giant painting we had on the wall in my office at Monkey Inferno, where it was the reverse of the evolution of man? Yeah, you know, evolution of man is It's an ape and then he's like standing half upright, then he's fully upright, then he's walking. And then it's like, you know, that's the Homo sapiens today. And the thing we had on the wall was the Homo sapiens. And then it's him bending over, looking at his phone, bending over, sitting, basically sitting down at a laptop and then typing. And it was like a coder at the end of it. And it was like, that was the final evolution.
I think the opposite.
That was what, that's what should be the monument in San Francisco. Yeah.
It's like a giant neckbeard. Yeah. Wearing a hoodie. Not a jacked Greek god.
Yeah.
You want to do one more thing?
Yeah, I got a few quick hitters. Okay, let's do this one. So talking to bankers, I think this is a good value add. This is a pro tip, life pro tip for any founders out there. I didn't know this when I first started doing startups. I had no idea. And only the first time I ever came into contact with a banker was when I tried to sell my company. So I was kind of like, I don't know, 8 or 9 years into doing entrepreneurship. And even then I didn't know what a banker was. Somebody said, I'll introduce you to a banker. And I thought that's the guy at Wells Fargo that like sits in the back, not in the front. Like I didn't know, I didn't really understand what that meant. Turns out a banker is like an investment banker. There's somebody who can help you sell your company, raise capital, get debt, that sort of thing. And they come in at a certain level of scale. So usually something like $30 million and up. Really, they try to be like kind of like a $100 million company or so. And I had a friend who was a successful entrepreneur and he told me something that really stuck with me. He goes, I was like, oh, when do you think you should talk to these guys? Like, you know, and I was thinking, meaning like when you're ready. Yeah. Like when I'm ready, like at the very beginning of when I'm ready, or do I need to have all my stuff together? And he goes, he goes, the best thing I ever did was I talked to a banker a year before I wanted to sell my business. And I talked to them and I go, a year before, what do you mean? And he goes, yeah, because I went to the banker and I said, if I wanted to sell my business today, what would it be worth? Uh, would it be able to sell? How strong would this asset look like in the marketplace right now? And they know all the deals that have gotten done. So bankers are in the process, the bankers are in the middle of selling companies just like yours in your industry. So you go to a banker that's in the industry, they've seen everything that's traded. They know the relative strength. They know the valuations that they're trading at. They know who the buyers are. They know why that they're buying. And so they can give you a really clear picture. And he goes, I went before I was ready because I wanted them to tell me what would cause this to not sell, what would be the weak points of this business. So that became my roadmap for the next year of what I needed to fix. That became my priority list so that when I did go to market, I actually had those things fixed. And if I hadn't gotten that feedback at that point, I would have just got that same feedback a year later and it would have punted the company down the road.
They're going to tell you that shit regardless. And so it's nice to know early.
And so I think bankers are actually a pretty big cheat code, not just for selling your— so that was the first thing I learned. Second thing was you could actually talk to bankers before you even go into a space. And I think you've done this before too, which is you go to a banker who's in a space that you're interested in and you talk to them about the companies that have sold and you're like, what companies have sold? How were they doing? What was their strengths and weaknesses? Why did— who are the buyers? Why did they buy?
The question is basically what's the profile and attributes of a business in this space that outkicks the rest of the, you know, that performs better than the other ones. So tell me all those attributes and those strengths and weaknesses and I'm going to just do that.
Or exactly, you can reverse engineer, meaning you can work backwards from that and find a great business. So I did this with a recent business we haven't announced yet where we first talked to bankers and then we learned from that, oh, that validated a lot of things we already liked about the business idea. We had an idea, talked to the bankers, that kind of co-signed or stamped that, yes, this is actually an even better idea than we thought, meaning it traded for much higher multiples. And the business could be like, we didn't, we didn't have to do A, B, and C. A and B were going to be more than enough to have an outstanding outcome. They also told us the, on the other hand, like, so for example, here's my 5 questions for bankers. I go to bankers and I say, what deals have gotten done recently? So that's the first question. Number 2, which ones, like you said, outkicked the coverage? So which ones traded at the highest multiple and why? What was unique about those? Was it just simply timing or was there something that they had in their, the way that they did it or their cost structure that made them particularly attractive? Then the third question I ask is what deals didn't get done and why? So meaning what deals couldn't cross the finish line? What were the big red flags that stopped people from buying the business? Because you want to basically know those too. Fourth question, who are the buyers and why are they buying? So basically every buyer has a plan and you want to know, are the buyers only strategics or are there private equity folks? Are there independent sponsors? Who are the potential buyers? And then what's their game plan once they buy it? Oh, they're buying things at a $5 million EBITDA number for 7x or 10x. And then they're going to, they're rolling up 5 of those and they're trying to get to $25 million and they're trying to trade that at 20x. And okay, that's their game plan. Gotcha. And what do they, you know, and then the last one is if my business did XYZ. So this is the useful one when you're not ready yet, but I basically say, hey, here's where we're at today. Here's where I think we're going to be in a year. If this is what my business looks like a year from now, what do you think it would trade for and why? And getting that from 4 or 5 different bankers really helps triangulate a space. I, so I did last week, I spent maybe 7 hours on the phone with bankers. Doing this process. And I feel like I learned more in those 7 hours than I, you know, would have in 7 months of just operating my business. It was so clarifying how to do this. And it just made me realize, man, more people should do this. I'm going to come on the pod and at least say it so that for the people for whom it's applicable, which is, I would say, you're an entrepreneur looking for your next hit, next space, and you're not, you're not just being driven by some passion or calling, you are doing it more analytically, let's say this is a tool, or if you're a business owner and you want to sell someday and you're at, you know, a few million dollars a year profit minimum, go have this conversation.
I'm so on board. I've done this a bunch of times and I think it's so smart. I think that there's this idea in Silicon Valley, there was like this trick question when you're raising funding from a VC and it says like, what's the outcome here? Like, what would you sell for? And the answer that everyone pretends—
over my dead body.
Yeah, I would never sell. And the answer, like, the answer absolutely can be like, I'm going to sell. But the answer probably should be like, well, I don't know, maybe we will, maybe we won't. But like, if we get to these numbers, we can sell for this, or we can IPO. Like, the idea of like, I have an exit in mind has been told to us that that's silly. I think that that's That's silly.
It's a very Silicon Valley thing because for two specific reasons. One, all venture capital is predicated on the idea that you're going to drive this to a billion dollars plus. So if you show any weakness, any hint that this guy would sell for less than a billion dollars, like if he got an $80 million offer that would change his life, he'll take it. Well, then this is not a good investment for me because I'm taking all the risk of failure, but I need to know that if this succeeds, it can be a billion dollar plus. And one of the risks of it being a billion dollar plus company is not just that The business works, but that this founder will hold on and they will resist temptation. So Silicon Valley investors, because of the fund math, they need that. That's why they put their values on you and say, whoa, those are your needs. That's cool for you. That's not my needs necessarily as an entrepreneur. That's the first thing. The second thing is there's an ego pride. It seems noble in some way to say, this is my life. This is my life company. I'll do this for 100 years. I think we're going to dominate the space so much. It just sounds so cool. It sounds so brave.
But by the way, I think you can do that. And also this, so there's this book that I love called Built to Sell. Have you ever seen Built to Sell?
No.
It's a popular book, but here's the premise, which is like you build your company to sell because building a sellable business means you may or may not sell it, but you have a company that operates well. And you know, what does Warren Buffett say? He says like, build your company so an idiot can run it because someday an idiot will be running it. That's kind of the premise here with built to sell, which is like, uh, you know, you're going to build your company to operate well. And so I think you should build your company to exit regardless if you're going to exit or not.
I agree fully. I guess what I'm saying is, and that works for us because we don't raise venture capital for our businesses anymore. We just own them ourselves. But a lot of the advice you get is still from VCs because they're the loud people. They're the people who are famous. So you sort of take their advice, even though you're not actually in their game, you're in your own game. And so I think that's a very, very important distinction. The other thing though is it does sound cooler to say I would never, I would never sell this. I sell, sell to, sell to Amazon. I'm trying to buy Amazon, right? When you, why do you love your boy Brett Adcock? Because Brett Adcock is all bravado. He's all chest, right? He basically will say, we're going to change the world. We're going to build a trillion dollar company. Anything less than that. What's the point? And you're like, oh my God, this is, it's, it's, it's intoxicating, as Sam Parr would say. It is intoxicating to be around somebody who is going only for the big shot and is not saying, I'm building this to sell, or that there's a path here to a $350 million exit, which will, you know, 7x your money. He doesn't talk like that. And because he doesn't talk like that, it is very attractive and it is very admirable because many of us wish that we could be as hardcore and brave and bold as that. We're just not. And by the way, I don't think you have to be. I don't want to play that game, but when you do see someone play that game, it's cool. I gotta admit it is cool.
Yeah, I agree. I agree. It's cool. I agree. And I like, and I, I've invested in a couple, like Brett Adcock, I invested in and he has this attitude and I like that. By the way, do you, now that you have friends that are VCs or I mean you, you sort of were one for a minute, isn't it funny how, um, you talk to them about like your company and raising capital and you'll say, no, we don't raise capital. And when you're friends with them, it's like, that's the right move.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, exactly. When you're not, when you're not— Give you a low five. They're not gonna do a high five, but they'll hit you with a low five real quick. Yeah.
They like say, that's the right move. Now, when you, uh, uh, tell them that and you're a potential client, they say like, oh, that's cute. Uh, like, you know what I mean? That's a lifestyle business. That's good for you. Uh, but when you're friends with them, they think to themselves, or they'll say like, smart.
The irony of the VC thing is a VC does the opposite of what they want all the founders to do. So they don't go all in on one idea. They have a diversified portfolio. They, um, they are not, you know, sort of, uh, only looking at the upside. They make a ton of money in fees, right? So they, you know, they're going to whatever when, when somebody raises money. So for example, um, what's the podcaster? Harry Stebbings. Harry Stebbings just raised a $400 million fund. That's amazing. That's incredible, by the way. Harry is going to make $80 million guaranteed in fees, just fees. He could be the worst investor in the world.
Why? Because that's—
he's going to make $80 million because he's going to make 2% a year on $400 million. It's 20% over the life of a 10-year fund. So just do 20%. $80 million in fees guaranteed. That's his floor. Who cares about the upside from there if you're Harry Stephens, right? All you gotta do is keep the game going and raise, maybe raise another fund. That would be amazing, right? So VCs, while they want you to be all in and they want you to live on scraps and they want you to have no diversification and stay super laser focused and they want you to go ride for the big upside, they themselves have a very different, uh, uh, picture of risk, which by the way, I think is a smarter picture of risk. Um, But it is, it is just funny that that's true. It's funny that, that the person giving you that advice is literally doing the exact opposite with their own finances and portfolio. That's insane. And by the way, they're not wrong because they're saying, oh, you wanted to play the Mark Zuckerberg game, then that's how you got to play. So they are giving you the right advice for you if you want to be doing that.
The $80 million fee thing. I never, I never knew that. I mean, I knew that they get, what is it?
2% when you do the math. It's, well, 2% is misleading. It's 2% every year off the top. It's the same reason why financial advice, we talk about Ken Fisher, oh, 1%, that's not much. 1% of your entire net assets every year off the top, regardless of performance, is like one of the great sort of Seven Wonders of the World. That's the eighth. It's like that the eighth wonder of the world is that a 1% off the top fee every year is actually, it becomes a gargantuan number over 10 years. And so that's the same thing with a venture fund like this.
Dude, God bless him. God bless America. I guess he's not even in America. That's the best part.
They need to put a monument of Harry Stemming somewhere for raising a $400 million fund and $80 million in fees. It's the $80 million monument.
Oh my God, that'd be great. That, that fund thing or that monument thing's ridiculous, right?
This monument thing is fascinating. We gotta, I gotta go look more into this. This is great. Great episode.
All right, that's it. That's a pod.
